NEWS FLASH! (June, 2009)
A Brief Question-and-Answer with Ed Macan, June 2009
Question: Any plans for Hermetic Science activity in the foreseeable future?
Answer: No.
Question: Any new content on the web site?
Answer: Yes. We’ve added a reviews page for the newest album, These Fragments I Have Shored Against My Ruins, with just under 20 reviews. I did two major interviews at the beginning of the year, both of which ran this past spring: with Didier Gonzales for the French journal Highlands Magazine, and with Rich Tvedt for the American journal Progression. I know that John Collinge depends on income from back sales of Progression, so out of respect to him, I am going to wait a decent amount of time before I post the Progression interview on the web site. The Highlands Magazine interview, on the other hand, ran in French, so we are posting the original English version on the web site. It’s the first post-These Fragments interview, and Didier asks some good questions, so I hope people will find it of some interest.
Question: Any news about the most recent book, Endless Enigma? Yes, but it’s not good. Open Court has handled the book very poorly. As many know, the book was published in July 2006. I said at the time I would be embarrassed if the book sold less than 2,000 copies in its first two years. By December 2007, the book had gone out of print, which surprised me. Upon investigation, I learned that Open Court only printed 1,500 copies. The book certainly would have sold 2,000 copies in its first two years had Open Court printed enough. The book was out of print until May 2008, when a tiny print run of 200 or 300 copies—I’ve yet to be told precisely how many—was released. By November 2008, that print run sold out as well. The book is coming up on its three-year publication anniversary, and it has barely been available half of that time! It never, ever occurred to me when I was negotiating the contract with Open Court that I might have a problem with them failing to keep in print a book for which sales have been steady and for which a proven and continuing market exists. I have already informed them that if they don’t reprint the book by the end of this year, I plan to reclaim copyright and shop it to another publisher. But interest is never as high the second time: Open Court’s indifferent marketing of the book has cost me, at the minimum, hundreds of sales and thousands of dollars in royalties that I will never reclaim.
Question: Any new writing projects? Yes. Last September, Scott Calef contacted me and asked me if I would like to contribute a chapter to Open Court’s forthcoming Led Zeppelin and Philosophy. I was a bit dubious. I contributed a chapter to Open Court’s Careful with that Axiom, Eugene: Pink Floyd and Philosophy that analyzed Floyd’s early output in the context of some of Adorno’s ideas. I thought it was a good piece of work, and I enjoyed working with George Reisch, the editor. However, I was disappointed with the marketing approach. Open Court makes no effort whatsoever to market these books according to the authors who work is included, and as a result, many readers of Rocking the Classics and Endless Enigma who would have been interested in reading a chapter by Edward Macan on Pink Floyd have no idea that I contributed a chapter to this book. In fact, I daresay most of them don’t even know the book exists.
Nonetheless, even realizing that Open Court was likely to do no better marketing the Led Zeppelin book than they did the Pink Floyd book, I felt I would like to contribute a chapter nonetheless, simply for the challenge of hammering out some new analytical approaches, and working with Scott Calef as an editor has been a pleasure. One thing that always struck me about Zeppelin ever since I was a teenager was that no other band juxtaposed the crude and the sublime quite like them; indeed, to an unusual degree, their music seems dependent on a stark juxtaposition of dualities. What was the cultural meaning of these juxtapositions? I decided to address this question by analyzing three specific dualities that are prominent in Zeppelin’s music—male/female, present/past, and East/West—in the context of Hegel’ ideas, specifically Hegelian dialectic. The songs I discuss are “Dazed and Confused,” “Whole Lotta Love,” “Stairway to Heaven,” “Kashmir,” and “In the Light.” I think it’s an interesting piece of work, as was the Floyd chapter, and I hope it gets a little more exposure than the Floyd chapter did. The book is slated for publication in November 2009.
Question: Anything you would like to add to this update?
Answer: Yes, I would like to say a quick word about the availability of the newest album specifically to my American audience. The three least expensive sources for a new copy of the These Fragments CD for Americans are Kinesis, Syn-Phonic, and amazon.com; if you click “CD Orders” on the main page and then click “How Else Can I Order Hermetic Science CDs,” there are links directly to all three distributors. If you are looking to download the new album as an Mp3, click “Mp3s” on the main page and then click the “Mindawn” link at the top of the page. The entire album is available as a download from Mindawn for the bargain basement price of $6.99!