Books by Booklist Authors: Bill Ott’s The Back Page.

Graff, Keir (author).

Bill Ott, the editor and publisher of Booklist, has spent much of his career championing great books to read—but he can be surprisingly reticent when it comes to talking about his own book, the recently released The Back Page (ALA Editions). Indeed, he endured some arm-twisting before agreeing to attend a party in his honor during ALA’s recent Annual Conference in Chicago. Afterward, he told one fan, “It’s just a clip book.”

This modesty extends to his delightful preface, “Booklist, the Back Page, and Me.” In it, he traces the origins of his column to his own love of literary miscellany and advertisers’ desire for something that would draw readers’ eyes to the advertisements on the inside back cover. “And so the Back Page was born—out of a desire to give book selectors something silly to do with a few minutes of their time, on the one hand, and out of a base need to serve mammon, on the other hand,” he writes.

Over more than 20 years, the Back Page has grown from an afterthought to many readers’ first stop in a new issue of Booklist, as readers’-advisory pioneer and At Leisure columnist Joyce Saricks makes plain in her foreword, “Confessions of a Back Page Junkie.” As the 84 columns included in this collection clearly show, while Bill certainly isn’t averse to writing about something silly, he’s not afraid to sink his teeth into meatier subjects, either.

Whether writing about Anthony Powell (Dancing to the Music of Anthony Powell) or Michael Connelly (Michael Connelly’s Los Angeles), book awards (Short Lists, Apples, and Oranges) or people who are bad for golf (Train Weasels), his own visit to the White House (Bill’s Excellent Adventure—at the White House) or a vice-presidential contender’s circumlocution (Diagramming Sentences)—or even apologizing for Booklist’s 1952 review of Charlotte’s Web (Mea Culpa)—Bill applies the same high standards. He approaches all subjects with intellectual seriousness, wry humor, and a finely tuned bullshit detector.

So how did all this start with quizzes? “I started out planning to do only quizzes, lists, and other forms of literary trivia,” says Bill. “I thought that would be easy. Boy, was I wrong! Unable to keep doing quizzes every two weeks, I started writing essays. I still do the occasional quiz, but there are more narrative pieces now.”

If an 800-word exegesis of Powell’s 12-novel cycle A Dance to the Music of Time is easier than a multiple-choice trivia quiz, clearly there’s a unique intelligence at work. Fortunately, Bill proves he’s only as human as the rest of us when, 20 times per year, he reveals himself as a championship-caliber deadline surfer. His answer to the question authors dread, “Where do you get your ideas?” is revealing.

“From the ether,” Bill replies. “From gazing at my bookshelves or the pictures on my walls. From what I’ve been reading, of course, but also from what I’ve been watching on TV. Occasionally, from the news, but more often from the conversations at our Booklist coffee sessions—my main source of news, really. And from Ben Segedin, Booklist production editor, who is as worried as I am about my not making a Back Page deadline and, therefore, constantly feeds me ideas.

“Usually when I tell Ben on Friday night that I have nothing for the column due Monday morning, I do have the glimmer of an idea somewhere. But quite a few times, I really have had nothing at all. I remember once I still had nothing on Saturday afternoon, when I was driving through my suburb on the way to the bank and saw a sign saying ‘Character Counts.’ The sign referred to being a good citizen, but my first thought was, ‘Of course it does, far more than plot.’ I knew then I had the first sentence of a column. It was only a matter of figuring out what came next.”

Despite Bill’s claim to be “one of those writers who struggles every time I’m asked to connect two sentences,” it’s unlikely readers can tell which columns arrived on deadline and which were composed with Ben banging on the door.

Asked which column is his favorite, Bill names one whose title seems apt: Perfection. It’s about pitcher Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series, and Bill calls his choice “sentimental.” Bill, sentimental? There he goes, surprising us again.