Tin House Books Gains More Repute Through Favorable New York Times Review

by Colleen McClintock

Tin House Books' logo.

The Tin House Books title, The Celestials, was featured in a New York Times online review today*. The book, written by Karen Shepard, was released by Tin House just one month ago and has already amassed a fair amount of praise from some of Shepard’s more well-reputed peers, such as Darin Strauss and Julia Glass. The Times is likewise generous, calling the novel “richly detailed,” and claiming Shepard’s highly metaphorical style as more genuine and lifelike than anything else.

In The Celestials, Shepard weaves a tale of vivid fiction to life from a basis of stark fact. She takes the real, yet obscure history of Chinese migrant workers in the United States and shoves it into the spotlight, under the sympathetic context of an unhappy married couple. This couple is what drives the plot’s intensity, but the true, more refined quality of the book lies in the subtext; the historical accounts of the Chinese workers. Shepard hits on the historical points of their assimilation, starting with details as facetious as the immigrants’ obsession with photography, all the way to the serious, and tragic passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which barred Chinese immigration into the United States.

In addition to The Celestials, Tin House Books released a huge range of other books this season, not one bit less complex or gripping than Shepard’s. Since March they have released seven fiction titles alone, many of which have received much attention.

Horses of God – a book that has been pegged as the Moroccan equivalent of Paulo Lin’s City of God – won the English Pen Award, and the much talked-about American Dream Machine is in line to become the next Showtime Original Series (at the hands of Dexter, himself, no less).

Tin House plans to release six more titles before the year comes to an end, and if the past is any indication of the future, they will surely close it out with a bang.

If you’d like to learn more about Tin House Books has to offer, please visit their website by clicking here.

*The review will be published again in print in this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review.

Tin House Gains More Speed with N.Y. Times Rave Review of 'American Dream Machine'

by Colleen McClintock

Tin House Books saw yet another rave review of Matthew Specktor’s novel American Dream Machine appear in the print copy of the New York Times’ June 2nd Sunday Book Review. The same review was published early on the New York Times website, the previous Friday.

In laymen’s terms, the exposure that both Tin House and Specktor received within one single weekend was downright impressive. The review was featured on the eleventh page of the Book Review section, and took up the entire space of the page; a feat not easily achieved in the Times.  It was written by Christine Sneed, a well-established author, herself. It is perhaps because of this that Sneed was able to tap into the sentimentality of Specktor’s novel in her review, calling its dismal tone “elegaic” and deeming it as a “hip bildungsroman” narrated by the protagonist, Nate, in the fashion of a “fever dream.”

A photo of Matthew Specktor featured in the Times' review
of American Dream Machine, June 2.

This is arguably the biggest of praises that Tin House has seen this year via American Dream Machine, but it is definitely not the first, as the Times – and others – have featured smaller-scale reviews of the book since its April release.

But it is not just novels like American Dream Machine that give Tin House its chutzpah; titles are only part of it. There are factors like last year’s VIDA count that also come into play.

The VIDA count is an annual survey taken by the feminist literary group, VIDA, to see where the most gender equality lies in the world of publishing. In 2012 Tin House stood out among the lot as one of the most progressive in terms of gender balance, along with fellow Benay client, Granta Magazine.

Tin House also reinforces itself as a living, breathing institution through the yearly workshops they hold for up-and-coming writers. They are residential programs run by the very same editors of Tin House Books and of their sister lit mag, Tin House Magazine. The workshops are entered strictly through application and acceptance, but hold little pretense elsewhere and promise much growth for those who enroll. It is Tin House’s way of aiding new writers in reaching the successes that authors like Specktor have reached. In this, they ensure the survival and perseverance of a literary tradition based on craft, style, and most importantly, passion.

If you’d like to learn more about Tin House Books, please feel free to visit their website by clicking here. To see excerpts from American Dream Machine, please visit the book's page on the Tin House website. 

Tin House Author Approached by Dexter's Matthew C. Hall with Plans for Showtime Script

Of course we at Benay know all too well the breadth of talent our clients publish, but the verity of this realization came to fruition when Benay client Tin House Book's author, Matthew Specktor, was approach by none other than Michael C. Hall, who had a very particular proposal for him. Hall, who many of you may know better as the murderous television vigilante, Dexter, had read Specktor’s most recent novel, American Dream Machine, released from Tin House Books in April, and seen huge cinematic potential. He wanted the story to come to life on screen as a new Showtime television series, and he wanted Specktor to be the one to write it to life. Specktor agreed to the project; a decision that he would have had trouble making years ago.



Tin House author, Matthew Specktor

“I didn’t know very many happy screenwriters,” he writes in a recent column for Salon Media Group. “I didn’t know any, in fact: even the most successful among them… were miserable, touched with a kind of self-loathing unique to the breed.”

And yet Specktor is still giving it a go. The American Dream Machine project is still in its infancy at the Showtime studios, according to The Hollywood Reporter, but the prospects do seem hopeful. With the Dexter saga at a close, Hall is ramped up for a fresh new project, and Specktor seems to be in a rather healthy place these days in his relationship with screenwriting.

Tin House Books joked about the news on their Facebook page, last Monday, asking their followers who they think should play Beau, the father of the novel’s main character who rises out of nothingness to become one of Hollywood’s top agents. Answers proved cheeky, ranging from Patton Oswalt to Fred Melamed.



Screenshot of Michael C. Hall from an
episode of the Showtime series, Dexter.

On a more serious note, it does seem only fitting that an actor like Hall would pick up a book like American Dream Machine and bring it to Showtime. After all, their fast-paced racy series like Dexter, Weeds, and Californication, mirror the tone found in a large amount of Tin House’s titles. Alongside American Dream Machine’s gritty reality sits novels like Me and Mr. Booker, a tale of a small town sixteen-year-old who finds salvation from boredom in a charming Brit who shows her the ways of the world through style, adventure, whiskey, cigarettes and sex, and Misfit, a novel that outlines the last week of Marilyn Monroe’s life, and her long hard fall from the top of stardom.

Tin House’s books having a modern cinematic feel is unmistakable. They are highly conducive to the modern medium of film and television; a fact solidified by Showtime’s recent interest in American Dream Machine, and a quality that will prove to be invaluable, given the way that the story is favored so immensely by motion picture in this age. It is just another way that we at Benay are right in saying that our clients are, indeed, on top.

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If you’d like to learn more about Matthew Specktor and his novel, American Dream Machine, please visit the Tin House website by clicking here. You can find excerpts from the novel, information on Specktor’s other works, other Tin House authors, and more.

- Colleen McClintock