J.L. POWERS

I am a lurker on a religious writer’s blog (a religous writer totally ensconsed in evangelical culture) and I’ve been sort of interested in how often he and his wife mention that he’s coming out with his first “hardback” book. (Yes, I even go to his wife’s blog, that’s how obsessed I am. I guess it’s because sometimes I realize that this could have been me given my own engagement in evangelical culture at one point in time and even while I’m glad it’s not me, I also can’t help but check it out, perhaps because I’m a mean ol’ bastard for feeling superior, or perhaps because I’m a little nostalgic and envious that he could make it in that world while I couldn’t, or maybe because I’m grateful to see somebody engaging with the culture from the inside and grappling with all its problems, and maybe also I’m grateful realizing that, but for the grace of God, there goeth I. Probably I read him for all those reasons and more.  Obviously, he and his wife say some interesting things.)

I never realized that the “hardback” book was such a big deal. It never even occurred to me to care about the fact that The Confessional is hardback. I worked at Cinco Puntos Press and we printed both hardback and paperback as first runs and even then, I never even thought about whether one was more “real” than the other, or more superior. But guess what? My post about hardback vs. paperback on Catalyst’s blog is accessed more than any other posting, except for the cover of Killing Trout and Other Love Poems, which also features a naked lady on the cover. (By the way, Trout Fishing is a paperback book! But I guess naked ladies on the cover trump hardbacks anyway….)