Publisher Profile: Open Road Integrated Media

A great source for “medium-old” books (and more)
As I’ve done once before and hope to do more of in the future, I'm devoting today’s post to one of my favorite publishers. Open Road Integrated Media was founded in 2009 by a former executive from HarperCollins. The company’s business model seems to be to buy up the electronic rights for previously published print books, both fiction and nonfiction, and rerelease them as e-books. It’s possible they may publish some first-run titles as well, as many of their authors are still alive and kicking. Their selection is wide, with over 10,000 titles now available, and their prices are always reasonable.

Open Road has a “daily deal” email blast called Early Bird Books, which I look forward to every day. If you haven't signed up for it, you should. Each day they offer about a half dozen different e-book titles for two or three bucks apiece. Buyer beware: the purpose behind such generosity is often to hook you on the first book in a series, as they have recently addicted me to Clifford D. Simak (see more on him below). Open Road publishes some e-book reprints of public domain classics, which they sell for 99 cents and often give away, but I prefer to just get those for free from Project Gutenberg. What I like about Open Road is that they offer what I would call “medium-old” books; that is, books that are too old to be considered current literature, yet too young to be copyright free.

Below is a list of a few of Open Road’s authors that I’ve sampled, often by taking advantage of their Early Bird Books deals. This is barely the tip of the iceberg as far as what they offer, however, so go browse their website.

  

Authors

Poul Anderson (1926-2001)
Anderson was named a Grand Master of science fiction, and he also wrote historical novels. In the latter category, I have purchased The Golden Horn, book one in the Last Viking Trilogy, but haven’t read it yet. Open Road sells e-books of 33 Anderson novels, including the sci-fi Harvest of Stars trilogy and the King of Ys series, set in ancient Rome and cowritten with his wife Karen Anderson.

Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973)
It was Pearl S. Buck who first turned me on to Open Road. After years of looking for her novels in used book stores, it was a relief to find her works available in e-book format, often offered for very low prices. Open Road sells 29 e-books of Buck’s best-known works, mostly her historical novels of China. Old Books by Dead Guys has reviewed eight Buck books: East Wind: West Wind (1930), The Good Earth (1931), Sons (1933), A House Divided (1935), Dragon Seed (1942), The Promise (1943), China Flight (1943), and The Living Reed (1963). All but China Flight are available from Open Road. I have another handful waiting to be read, including This Proud Heart (1938) and Peony (1948). I hope Open Road eventually expands this line to include Buck’s more obscure, farther afield works. Perhaps there are rights issues standing in the way, or maybe those less critically acclaimed works just haven’t been deemed worthy of resurrection.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Several collections of Einstein’s writings are published by Open Road, including his landmark work The Theory of Relativity. Books like Essays in Science and Essays in Humanism cover the wide breadth of Einstein’s thought. His personal convictions and idealism are revealed in The World As I See It and Out of My Later Years. A while back I picked these up for free, but they usually go for about ten dollars each.

James Grady (1949 - )
Grady is the author of the Condor series of spy novels, beginning with Six Days of the Condor (1974), upon which the Robert Redford film Three Days of the Condor was based. Open Road has it, along with four other Grady books, including Condor.net (2011), a recent sequel.

James Hilton (1900-1954)
Open Road offers e-books of six of Hilton’s novels, including his best known works Lost Horizon (1933) and Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1934). The former is a pretty good novel about a secret utopia in the mountains of Tibet.

Halldór Laxness (1902-1998)
Icelandic author Halldór Laxness won the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature. Open Road only publishes one Laxness e-book, The Atom Station (1948), which I did not care for. The English-language rights for most of Laxness’s novels are held by Vintage Books.

Fritz Leiber (1910-1992)
Leiber is a Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels. He was a pioneer of the sword and sorcery genre with his Lankhmar series of “Swords” novels (e.g. Swords in the Mist [1968], Swords against Wizardry [1968]), which I remember reading in junior high. The series chronicles the adventures of two sword-wielding heroes called Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser, the former being a giant barbarian and the latter a diminutive thief. These books are kind of like Robert E. Howard’s Conan series, but with a better sense of humor. Open Road offers the complete Lankhmar Series, as well as several of Leiber’s science fiction and horror novels, including The Big Time (1961).

Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980)
I had previously read all of Porter’s short stories and essay in the volume of her works published by the Library of America (2008). However, her only novel, Ship of Fools (1962), was not included in that volume, and I was able to pick it up in e-book format from Open Road for a couple of bucks. I was not too crazy about the book, to tell the truth, but I’m glad I had an opportunity to read it on my Kindle for a low price.

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957)
Sayers is best known as the creator of the fictional detective Lord Peter Wimsey, one of the best sleuths in British literature this side of Sherlock Holmes. I have read the first book in the series, Whose Body? (1923), and gave it a favorable review. Open Road has all 15 of Sayers’ books in the series, which includes both novels and short story collections.

William Shatner (1931- )
Hardly a classic author, but when Shat’s TekWar (1989) came up as a daily deal, how could I resist? Though I’m a fan of pulpy sci-fi, I found it so-so at best. However, if you’re so inclined, Open Road offers e-books of all nine volumes in the Tek series.

Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988)
Simak is one of the most respected and highly decorated science fiction authors of the 20th century, having won multiple awards for sci-fi as well as fantasy and horror (and he wrote westerns!). I have encountered a few of his stories over the years, but never really knew the extent of his prolific career until I read the collection I Am Crying All Inside and Other Stories: The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak, Volume One (2015). This series, published by Open Road, is projected to amount to 14 volumes (the first six are available now). If the first book is any indication, this will be an excellent series. Open Road also publishes e-books of about 20 Simak novels, including his best-known work, City (1952).

Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)
Open Road recently released e-book editions of Sinclair’s 11-volume Lanny Budd series. Previously, one had to hunt for used copies of these books or pay $50 for a hardcover edition. Now they can be dowloaded in seconds for about $10 each. I can’t thank Open Road enough for finally making these books accessible to a broader audience. Lanny Budd is a wealthy American, living in France, who gets involved in many of the most important historical events of the early 20th century, all told through the lens of Sinclair’s leftist views. (Imagine if Howard Zinn wrote spy novels.) Fans of this series include Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and Mahatma Gandhi. So far I have reviewed the first three volumes—World’s End (1940), Between Two Worlds (1941), Dragon’s Teeth (1942)—and I’m currently working on book four, Wide Is the Gate (1943). Open Road also offers inexpensive e-books of several other Sinclair novels, including The Jungle (1906) and King Coal (1917).

Philip Wylie (1902-1971)
I’ve only read one book by sci-fi author Wylie, Gladiator (1930). The bad news is Open Road doesn’t publish it, but the good new is it’s in the public domain, so you can read it for free. Open Road does, however publish seven of Wylie’s sci-fi novels, including The Disappearance (1951), which I hope to get to soon.

  

On their website, Open Road boasts that they publish over 2,000 authors. Granted, that includes the authors of many public domain works that you can get elsewhere. Even so, they’ve still got a sizable stable of talent in the “medium-old” books category. If only all of my favorite early 20th-century authors were so easy to find, purchase, and download. Keep up the good work, Open Road!

Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter

Never-ending boat trip
Katherine Anne Porter is best known as a writer of short stories and essays, but she did publish one novel, Ship of Fools, in 1962. I’ve read all of Porter’s stories and essays, and consider myself a fan of her work, though with some reservations. In books like Flowering Judas and Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Porter has proven herself a master of short fiction, but her prodigious talents do not translate well to the long form, as evidenced by this arduous and frustrating test of patience.

The title of the book is not merely an expression, but rather a literal representation of the novel’s contents. The story takes place in 1931 on a German passenger liner traveling from Veracruz, Mexico to various ports in Europe; its final destination being Bremerhaven. Porter based the novel on an actual voyage she took that year from and to those ports of call. An ensemble cast of characters of various nationalities and backgrounds comprises the passenger list, and the novel is essentially a series of scenes detailing the interactions between this disparate company of travelers thrown together into forced proximity by a sheer coincidence of booking. Throughout the novel, Porter’s prose is impeccable and her insight into human behavior authentic and perspicacious. Each succeeding vignette inspires the reader to remark, “What a beautifully rendered scene!” but regrettably in sum total they don’t add up to anything but a trying bore. Really only two events of note occur over the entire voyage form the New World to the Old. The rest is just overindulgent description. Perhaps Porter’s intention was to capture the relentless tedium and frustrating lack of privacy of nautical transatlantic travel. If so, she has succeeded, but such success does not translate into enjoyable or meaningful reading.

Despite the “Cast of Characters” list at the front of the book, it’s difficult to even tell many of the characters apart. There’s little to distinguish one German Frau from another. Not a single likeable character exists on the entire boat. The smart ones are all evil; the nice ones are all stupid. Each is defined by his or her faults. Prejudice is a recurring theme in the book, and everyone on the ship proves themselves a bigot in one way or another. Race, religion, sex, class, nationality—all are grounds for social warfare in these international waters. Not surprisingly for this time period, anti-Semitism is rampant, and takes a prominent role in the tenuous plot. Porter does a fine job of depicting all these various shades of hate, but to what end? What’s even more baffling is how Porter displays her own prejudices—whether intentionally or inadvertently is unclear. Although she lived in Mexico for a few years and professed a love for the country and its people, her depictions of Mexicans and other Hispanic persons is far from flattering. The Mexican, Cuban, and Spanish characters in the book are all dancers, prostitutes, or drunks. While the Germans and Americans all have backstories complete with degrees and careers, the Hispanic characters don’t even get last names.

As I said earlier, I’m an admirer of Porter, and don’t relish bashing her work. Having spent some time in Veracruz, I enjoyed the book’s opening passages and looked forward to embarkation with enthusiasm. Perhaps, however, I was too optimistic for a satisfying plot. What I got instead was the modernist description-for-description’s-sake approach in which every emotional inkling merits scores of pages. Despite all the navel-gazing, no one learns anything. No one changes. By all means, spare yourself this pointless and unpleasant voyage.
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Collected Stories and Other Writings by Katherine Anne Porter (Library of America)

Exceptional fiction, lackluster essays
Katherine Anne Porter was one of the best American writers of short stories between the World Wars. Though she achieved her fame through fiction, and rightfully so, she also published a great deal of journalistic essays, literary criticism, and brief memoirs. This volume from the Library of America, the most complete one-volume collection of her work, includes roughly 500 pages of fiction and 500 pages of nonfiction.

Porter published three collections of short stories during her career, all of which are included here. The first collection, Flowering Judas and Other Stories, is also the best. It consists of twelve stories, most of which take place in Mexico, where Porter lived for several years. Among the standouts in this group are the excellent title piece, “Maria Concepción,” “The Cracked Looking Glass,” and “He.” The second volume included here, Pale Horse, Pale Rider: Three Short Novels, is also very good. It contains the excellent novella “Noon Wine,” possibly Porter’s best piece of work, in which a tragic event takes place on a farm in southern Texas. The third volume of short fiction included here, The Leaning Tower and Other Stories, is weaker than the other two, with the only real standout piece being “A Day's Work.” The overall impression given by Porter’s fiction is that she is a first-class writer, but she doesn’t hit it out of the park every time. She likes to experiment with style and structure, striving to push the envelope with each story. Even when she fails in her experiments, one can appreciate the inkling of genius in her failures.

Her nonfiction, on the other hand, does not inspire the same degree of admiration. The numerous essays in this volume are divided into three main categories: Criticism, Personal and Particular, and Mexican. The Criticism section, which covers a who’s who of modern authors, is painful to get through. Her style could charitably be called impressionistic, but for the most part these pieces are rambling and disjointed. She’s far more interested in crafting a clever turn of phrase than she is in educating her audience about the book or author in question. The second section, Personal and Particular, is a mixed bag of writing about writing, autobiographical stories, and miscellaneous journalism and criticism. Porter doesn’t have anything particularly interesting to say about the writer’s craft. She proclaims no allegiance to any school, but advocates originality and creativity in general, praising the likes of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. The best piece in this section is “The Never-Ending Wrong,” about the trial of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. Porter took part in the protests against their unjust trial and execution. The third section, Mexican, I enjoyed much more than the rest of the nonfiction, simply because I happen to have a personal interest in Mexican history and culture. Porter shows herself very knowledgeable in Mexican culture and politics, and has a knack for vividly capturing the atmosphere and mind set of the nation and its people.

Usually I praise the editing of the Library of America books, but here the editorial strategy seems to be to throw in everything she ever wrote, with the notable exception of her only published novel, Ship of Fools, which would have been preferable to most of the nonfiction included here. Like all books in the Library of America series, this one provides an extensively detailed chronology of the author’s life, which reveals far more about Porter than her own autobiographical writings. Porter was an excellent writer, so you really can’t go wrong in buying this book, but I must admit that I expected to like it much more than I did. Even Porter admits that much of her nonfiction was written out of financial necessity. It’s a shame she didn’t have the means or the time to leave us with more of her superb fiction.

Fiction: Short story collections included in this volume

Flowering Judas and Other Stories 

Pale Horse, Pale Rider: Three Short Novels 

The Leaning Tower and Other Stories 

Nonfiction: Divided into three main categories

Criticism 

Personal and Particular 

Mexican 

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The Leaning Tower by Katherine Anne Porter

Not her best work
The Leaning Tower is a collection of short stories and novellas by Katherine Anne Porter. It was originally published in 1934, sandwiched chronologically between her two other collections of short fiction, Flowering Judas and Pale Horse, Pale Rider. Compared to those excellent books, The Leaning Tower is a bit of a disappointment. While Porter’s prodigious ability to craft realistic settings and render psychologically authentic characters is evidently on display here, the selections tend to be too heavy on description and too light on plot.

The opening novella, “The Old Order,” is composed of a series of chronologically jumbled vignettes in the life of a family in rural Texas, told from the third person perspective of Miranda, presumably the same Miranda featured in Porter’s stories “Old Mortality” and “Pale Horse, Pale Rider.” Miranda recounts memories from her childhood, concerning in particular her grandmother and the family’s black servants. The insights into black/white relations in the changing American South are fascinating, but too much attention is devoted to the imperious grandmother, who treats everyone as a servant, whether black or white, old or young.

This is followed by the short story “The Downward Path to Wisdom,” told from the point of view of a young boy about five years old. It feels a bit pointless, as if the story’s sole purpose is for Porter to prove she can write from this unusual perspective. In “Holiday,” a young city woman decides to spend her spring vacation living with a large farming family in East Texas. There she develops a friendship of sorts with the family’s crippled servant, who carries a dark secret. The story finishes well, but the first two-thirds is spent merely describing in detail the daily life of the family, at times from an overly critical, condescending perspective. The best selection in the book by far is “A Day’s Work.” The Hallorans are an Irish couple in New York whose marriage has devolved into hatred. The husband, unemployed, blames his wife for missed opportunities, while she views herself as a martyr to his sins. It is an excellent story until the final paragraph, in which one character behaves in a manner which seems to be a complete reversal of everything that came before.

The collection ends with its longest piece, the title novella “The Leaning Tower.” Charles Upton, an aspiring painter, lives out a childhood dream by traveling to Berlin, but ultimately finds Germany a disappointing destination. Porter’s depiction of Berlin is about as flattering as a George Grosz cartoon. There is much dwelling upon the myriad ways in which Germany sucks, its people are ugly and rude, etc. The story provides a vivid glimpse into the atmosphere and mindset of a nation licking its wounds from one disgraceful World War while lurching towards another. Once again, however, there’s just too much description and not enough action. When things finally start happening to Charles, it’s too little, too late.

Katherine Anne Porter is one of the best American short story writers of the 20th century, and her brilliant talents do shine forth at moments here and there among these selections, but the entries here never rival masterpieces like “Flowering Judas,” “The Cracked Looking-Glass,” or “Noon Wine.” Flowering Judas and Pale Horse, Pale Rider are much better collections of her work, and should be given higher reading priority over The Leaning Tower.

Stories in this collection

The Old Order 

The Downward Path to Wisdom 

A Day’s Work 

Holiday 

The Leaning Tower 

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Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter

A triumphant trifecta
This book by Katherine Anne Porter, originally published in 1939, consists of three short novels, each about fifty pages long. Though the three pieces vary in style and subject matter, they are all of exceptional quality and admirably showcase Porter’s estimable talent for crafting short fiction.

In the first piece, “Old Mortality,” two young sisters grow up listening to the family stories told by their parents’ and grandparents’ generations, which over time develop into a sort of mythology. The most romanticized character in the family saga is the tragic figure of Aunt Amy, who, praised for her beauty and perfection yet criticized for her free spirit, suffered from tuberculosis and died at a young age. Though written in the third person, the novel is related through the eyes of Miranda, the younger of the two young girls. As she grows into womanhood, Miranda begins to understand that the reality of the past does not live up to the romanticized mythology she grew up with, and that family, beyond its sheltering comforts, has a dark side as well.

The second novel, “Noon Wine,” takes place on a farm in southern Texas. Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, despite having two young children, are growing aged and infirm. They cannot keep up with the farm work as they used to. Salvation comes in the form of Mr. Helton, a stranger who shows up at their gate one day asking for work. Mr. Helton is a Swede from South Dakota, and a relentlessly hard worker. As a farmhand he is truly the answer to the Thompsons’ prayers. Yet, as most good things are too good to be true, the Thompsons soon begin to suspect that this laconic stranger may have some dark secrets in his mysterious past.

The final piece, “Pale Horse, Pale Rider,” also stars a young woman named Miranda, whom we can assume is the same girl from the first piece, though it’s never explicitly stated. Now 24, alone and independent, she works as a theatre critic for a newspaper in a western “hick town,” which sounds a lot like Denver. Miranda falls in love with a soldier who will soon depart for the European battlefields of World War I. She despises the war and the jingoism that accompanies it, and dreads the day when her new love will depart for his inevitable doom. War is not the only manifestation of death that looms ominously on Miranda’s horizon, however, as an influenza epidemic also rages through the city.

My personal taste in literature usually leans toward more antiquated works of romantic, realist, and naturalist stylings, but as far as the literature between the World Wars is concerned, Porter is clearly the best of the American modernists. She utilizes the linguistic experimentation and psychological probity characteristic of modernism to her advantage, without indulging in the gratuitous verbal games to which so many of her contemporaries succumbed. Her writing straddles the line between the naturalism of Theodore Dreiser and the modernism of William Faulkner, combining the best characteristics of both while dispensing with their faults. “Noon Wine,” which is primarily a naturalistic piece, is the strongest work in the book, while the more abstract “Pale Horse, Pale Rider,” is the weakest. At times it seems the main purpose of the latter piece is for Porter to demonstrate her prowess at depicting surrealistic, influenza-induced hallucinations. Nevertheless, all three novels are very strong works of literature and will appeal to readers of all stripes who appreciate writing that’s both proficient and profound.

Stories in this collection

Old Mortality 

Noon Wine 

Pale Horse, Pale Rider 

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Flowering Judas and Other Stories by Katherine Anne Porter

Epitomizes the art of the short story
Originally published in 1930, Flowering Judas and Other Stories was the first collection of short stories by Katherine Anne Porter. These twelve selections constitute a remarkable literary debut, impressively showcasing not only Porter’s exceptional talent but also her tremendous range.

Eight of the twelve stories are set in Mexico, a country in which Porter lived, worked, and traveled. The title selection is the best of several masterpieces in the book. “Flowering Judas” tells the story of a 22-year-old American schoolteacher who moonlights as a revolutionary. The reality of the revolution falls far short of her preconceived, romantic notions. The head agitator she serves seems more concerned with bedding her than with the rebel cause. Even worse, she fails to live up to her own idealistic image of a revolutionary because she’s too tied to her Catholic, American, bourgeois past to wholeheartedly devote herself to the fight. Throughout the book, Porter celebrates the beauty and romance of Mexico while simultaneously stripping away the pretty veneer to expose the often harsh and ugly reality underneath. She explores the Mexican experience from various perspectives: rural and urban, rich and poor, agrarian and intellectual, native and outsider. In “Hacienda,” a Russian film crew shoots a movie which sounds an awful lot like Sergei Eisenstein’s Qué viva Mexico! When the company of condescending outsiders occupies a hacienda where pulque is manufactured, cultural and class distinctions become glaringly apparent as the real life events of the inhabitants and the fictional narrative of the film become inextricably entwined.

Porter is a fantastic writer, but there are still some weak links in this chain. “The Martyr,” a fable about an artist who loses his muse, is a little too lighthearted to achieve any profound effect. The excessively brief “Magic” also seems a bit pointless. The least satisfying entry in the collection is “Theft,” which is told in deliberately obscure, impressionistic prose reminiscent of some of William Faulkner’s more self-indulgent ramblings. Thankfully, she rarely resorts to this sort of gratuitous verbal chicanery, though she’s not averse to narrative experimentation. Elsewhere she uses the stream-of-consciousness technique to far better effect, as in “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall,” told from the point of view of a dying 80-year-old-woman. In the excellent “Rope,” she deftly interweaves the competing interior monologues of a bickering married couple.

A common theme running through these stories is regret—regret for missed opportunities, lost loves, or loves retained long past their prime. In the exemplary piece “The Cracked Looking-Glass,” a married couple resides on a farm in Connecticut, the husband thirty years older than the wife. The woman misses her former exciting life in New York City, laments her attachment to an aging husband, and longs for a reunion with a younger man she once knew. Like many of the stories included here, the conclusion relies on how she reacts to these regrets and whether or not she can come to terms with them.

Porter demonstrates a clairvoyant insight into human psychology and a masterful skill at crafting riveting prose. The few low points in this collection are not the mistakes of a bad writer but rather the failed experiments of a brilliant scientist, necessary pitfalls in the course of a stellar career. This collection is a landmark work of literature by one of America’s greatest authors.

Stories in this collection

María Concepcíon

Virgin Violeta

The Martyr

Magic

Rope

He

Theft

That Tree

The Jilting of Granny Weatherall

Flowering Judas

The Cracked Looking-Glass

Hacienda


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