Introduction

Print advertising is expensive. When I started CB editions in 2007 I took a cheap option, placing a classified ad in the LRB: ‘Imagine yourself, dear reader, sitting in your favourite chair with your book and “your nine drinks lined up on the side table in soldierly array”, and every so often you look up and say, even if there is no one else in the room but the dog, Hey, switch off the TV and listen to this – and you start reading aloud.’ I offered a free CBe book to the first six readers who could name the story from which the nine drinks were quoted, and I was going to start there, with ‘Critique de la Vie Quotidienne’ by Donald Barthelme, but I’ve reread it and decided that Barthelme is one of those writers who for me was liberating when first encountered – Oh, you can do it that way! – but I’m now in a different place. Writers are ruthless.