Beatrice and Virgil is selling just fine anyway, even if it means quoting raves from the St. Louis Post Dispatch and Marie Claire in the American print advertisements rather than, say, The New York Times and The Washington Post. Martel may not feel totally debased by such criticism, but he seems unlikely to find it entertaining, either. While the age of irony didn’t collapse with 9/11, he seems to be the sort who wishes it did, even though Martel maintained his profile between novels by publishing passive-aggressive letters sent to avowed non-reader Stephen Harper. But you don’t have to be a philistine prime minister to find a public reading of a play-within-a-novel — requiring the author to precede each line with the names of the stuffed animal speaker — completely tedious out of context. On the other hand, this is the man’s anguished art, he read 80 different books and visited Auschwitz three times to come up with it, Barack Obama wrote him a fan letter, maybe he knows something you don’t.

Responding to questions from his avowed fans, Martel seems to have memorized the answers for the grind of a four-month book tour — like explaining that he writes about animals because they work for him, and people tend to be less cynical about those characters, and while human characters have symbolic potential it’s harder work to make that happen. And if you think this book’s premise is ridiculous, just wait until the next one about three chimpanzees in the high mountains of Portugal, except he mentioned that to an audience who would look forward to devouring that. Maybe all the hostility incited by Martel relates to his admission that, like most in his 46-year-old male demographic, he’s not much of a naturally voracious reader himself — plus, writing at the computer makes him especially prone to distractions, like games of Spider Solitaire.

Martel’s sense of humour, though, seems to come from a different planet. He brought up the 64th book he sent to Stephen Harper, a Harelquin book called The Virgin’s Secretary’s Impossible Boss, expressing marvel at the assembly-line mass production of such pulpy romances — suggesting he never came across such a thing prior to last fall. Such products are of little interest to someone who, in the course of detailing how he got the idea to write about a boy and a tiger in Life of Pi, nonchalantly shares the recollection with the words, “I found myself in India with nothing to do …” Tackling the Holocaust in Beatrice and Virgil opened him up to a different kind of substantive criticism, subsequently overshadowed by the razzing received by the book’s structure, although a gentleman old enough to potentially take offense brought it up — and Martel seems especially eager to discuss. Somewhat surprisingly, he brings up a line from Sarah Silverman: “Nazis are assholes, although they’re cute when they are babies, I’ll give them that.” It’s a statement nobody can disagree with! And underscores a good point: “History is a process where the blood of things is squeezed out.”

And it was Martel who raised the specific issue of the negative reviews, suggesting it weighs heavily on his mind, even as his point is that they really don’t — beyond the day-and-a-half last month he admits to losing his balance after the thrashing in the NYT. Suggestions that he only followed through on writing this contentious book for the money also rankle him, pointing out that neither John Grisham nor Stephen King need more royalties, yet they also have a gift they want to share with the world. And you don’t control what happens to your gift after its given, right? “If you shred the book in front of my face,” shrugs Martel, “that’s a bit disappointing.” Before shifting gears to the book-signing part of the appearance, he made a point of thanking Chapters for the gift of the Kobo, which threatens the kind of discourse that motivates one to discover how a millionaire author publicly acquits himself in the face of hostility. Who is going to get riled up about the existence of a book when it can vanish from sight by striking a delete key?

Not that Coupland is selling the idea that every internet contraption fulfills a McLuhan prophecy: he would have been “appalled and horrified” by Wikipedia, one of the book’s footnotes affirms, and then another footnote suggests that any reader who wants to know more about Understanding Media turn to its Wikipedia page ahead of reading how that book predicted the machines Wikipedia is being read on. The author of Generation X — who weaves in examples of how his concurrent reading of McLuhan inspired its sequel Generation A in a few skippable pages — couldn’t possibly conceive of how to convey the manic energy of this book into a stage show, having established that his idea of public art is a large red canoe, or giant toy soldiers, or a clock tower of suburban bungalows. Instead, the presentation was more along the lines of a politely philosophical version of game show The Marriage Ref, as Jane Urquhart was also ebulliently pitching her assessment of Lucy Maud Montgomery, and Nino Ricci looked irritable at the prospect of having to publicly enthuse about Pierre Trudeau. The result provided insights into what a John Ralston Saul-hosted dinner party must be like, specifically the one who did the commissioning of these quickies — 18 titles on 20 subjects altogether — stating that they were “not about old and tired people — not that there’s anything wrong with being old, and tired.” And when he turned to Coupland to write a McLuhan one, it turned out all Coupland knew was the phrase “The Medium is the Message” and the cameo appearance in Annie Hall. “It was like getting the biggest homework assignment of the year dropped into your lap on June 6,” and all of a sudden he was grappling with The Gutenberg Galaxy.

And where are we now? Convincingly arguing that a book about McLuhan, published in 2010, is not really about a dead person at all — in fact, when the last proper biography was published about 15 years ago, there’s too much to consider in the now. Coupland found much to relate to in his subject’s family background, and medical conditions (footnoting his own story of quitting smoking, then sneezing out something veined resembling a “seedless green grape,” and not being able to hear very well ever since) and McLuhan’s contemplation in the book The Mechanical Bride of how the Blondie comic strip’s main character Dagwood Bumstead represented the emasculation of the male species to the brink of homosexuality — these are the things Coupland thinks about, if not also abstractly tweets about. And, of course, he brought up Twitter to the senior-skewing audience, pointing out how his friend Jian Ghomeshi was riveted by the role it played last year after the Iranian election — and now Jian can use the service to flirt with celebutard publicist Kelly Cutrone. (Granted, he didn’t mention the latter.)

Coupland does write about his one physical interface with McLuhan, on a frigid day in January 1989 as the resident gag writer at the Frank Stronach-owned vanity business magazine Vista, where the idea of exploiting new technology to promote the publication led to the creation of a “Celebrity Fax of the Month” — a project which led to the Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Thornhill with paper and graphite, to create a rubbing of the only tombstone of its time to use a computer data font to spell out “The Truth Shall Make You Free.” And now there’s no need to make a pilgrimage in order to transmit the image of a celebrity grave, which distracts people to seek other diversions instead — recent dabbling with Dexedrine, after asking his doctor to give him “whatever they gave Judy Garland in the 1930s,” was explained with morbid fascination  — so it’s no wonder that American democracy is in a tailspin and that Ted Kennedy’s senate seat ends up snatched by someone whose biggest claim to fame, best as Coupland can recall, is that he was once voted “World’s Hottest Guy.”

And what about Toronto, the place where McLuhan ultimately settled — in a state of midtown tranquility preserved in a conversation filmed with Tom Wolfe, in lawn chairs — only to become an academic pariah after the brain surgery that followed his time in the psychedelic spotlight? “A bell jar inside which nothing would ever change and where all of life’s decisions had been made for one beforehand,” based on the memories of Coupland’s family, although that was the condition people were most comfortable with in public. A square town sounded like a good place to be a square peg, before the commodification of cool, not just the hipster definition, but also the McLuhan one. And now, a new alphabet, where everything is just process: Apps! Branding! Content! etc. etc. etc. There is nothing new under the sun, because it’s already been done — except you’re consistently tormented by knowing that it actually has not.

Writing ain’t easy, though! That’s why Martel proposed following up his Booker Prize-winning blockbuster with a flip book about the Holocaust. And his publisher shot it down, so instead Beatrice and Virgil focuses on stuffed animals in a taxidermy shop, a premise whose sheer ridiculousness is defined as the idea of an amateur playwright, see? And it gives the author a window to be passive-aggressive about the rejection of the flip book thing.

“Mr. Martel’s new book,” reads The New York Times review, “is every bit as misconceived and offensive as his earlier book was fetching.” More to the point, a blog recap by Edward Champion: “Why Yann Martel’s Beatrice and Virgil is the Worst Book of the Decade” — picking apart the overwriting, redundancies and nonsense designed to stretch the word count to something that might resemble a novel, even if its 197 pages involve a typeset verging on large print. Meanwhile, over at the What is Stephen Harper Reading? website, the antagonist’s spouse Alice Kuipers foists her endorsement of Charlotte’s Web upon the supposedly lit-phobic PM: “This is why Yann writes to you. Like Charlotte the spider, he believes that the written word can shape lives and save lives. I hope by reading about E. B. White, and more importantly, by reading his books, you’ll be reminded that as we need politicians and prime ministers, so we need books and writers.” And, in the face of his recent reviews, defending his reported $3 million advance for the next four months might make both parties more sympathetic to one another.

Lander was also recently on CNN, on a panel of pundits discussing the current U.S. Census, specifically its offer of a self-identity choice between Negro, African-American and Black. Then he fed a follow-up discussion with some words on YouTube, wondering what it would be like to be counted as one relatively new white person in California: “The city of Toronto was never really a great city when it was all white,” he explains, “almost every white person there recognized that it was a very boring, awful place — and in my lifetime I watched the city completely change, become one of the most diverse places on earth, and it’s been fantastic. But I don’t think everybody in the U.S. shares that opinion. I’ve watched some of those Tea Party protests — and it doesn’t look exactly like the model of diversity …” But it does lead him to contemplate the range of backgrounds whose category in the race section is limited to White: “Jews, Italians, the Irish, Germans — all these people wouldn’t have been considered white before, but they all bought into that amazing American dream, and that doesn’t work for all immigrants.” Lander’s parting advice? If you don’t like the U.S.A., and you don’t want to be a Hollywood comedy writer, you’re better off immigrating to Toronto, and eating Jamaican food.

Niedzviecki still has some distance left to go before catching up to Syracuse University professor Robert Thompson, whose views on the appeal of Jay Leno were shamelessly solicited for the Globe in January — alas, today, The New York Times tapped Thompson to offer extensive insight into the same topic, so it must be alright. Prof. Thompson is more a favourite of the Toronto Star’s man in Washington, D.C., Mitch Potter, who used him six times in 2009, then earlier this month got the pop culture academic to opine about the iPad. By contrast, local writer Niedzviecki’s recent Star exposure stalled after they ran a Peep Diaries excerpt last May.

The concept of an author dedicated to articulating the goofy appeal of Web 2.0 services is so 2009, though — the new wave of books about the internet are gloomier and doomier about what it means for the future of creative expression. So, now that his year-long run with The Peep Diaries is over — at least until the forthcoming documentary film spin-off, Peep Me — a recap of the last 10 times Niedzviecki told the Globe what they wanted to hear.

“Information’s power, but information is also a security blanket, a total lack of confidence in ourselves and the people we know.” ["Twitterstalking" by Zosia Bielski, Apr. 2, 2009]

“If you have something dramatic going on in your life you’re going to get attention. On the other hand, is that the kind of attention you want?” ["Should getting canned be Facebook fodder?" by Caryn Brooks, Jun. 19, 2009]

“Advertising is a big reason these things are of interest to corporations, for you to be near something and be told, ‘Hey! This pizza place is great!’” ["Radar love" by Zosia Bielski, Sep. 18, 2009]

“[Lauren White a/k/a Raymi the Minx is] very much the epitome of the committed, addicted blogger — no real gift to speak of, besides this intense need for attention. And she thrives on it.” [Love in the time of bloggeria" by Christopher Shulgan, Nov. 7, 2009]

“… mass voyeurism in which we get more and more of our kicks from peeping in on the entertaining foibles of the real lives of others; at the same time, we become more and more amenable to others peeping in on our lives.” ["Forget Tiger's privacy. What about yours" by Judith Timson, Dec. 7, 2009]

“I think some people say, ‘Oh, I just ignore the cameras and go about my day.’ I’m not sure that’s ever true. My experience has been that that’s basically impossible.” ["What I Learned This Year" by Dave McGinn, Jan. 1, 2010]

“It’s an obvious reflection and end point of a culture that is not particularly complicated, that rarely looks at things with a long-term perspective or tries to get to the root of an issue, that is very much infantile.” ["From the blogs of babes" by Dave McGinn, Jan. 23, 2010]

“It’s not a celebrity problem, it’s not a politician problem — it’s an ease thing. It’s a case where technology is changing morality without us even considering it.” ["We forget, but texts remember" by Dakshana Bascaramurty, Feb. 10, 2010]

“The landline represents a clumsy analogue past, a time when we didn’t have every possible service available to us on demand, when we had to watch what everyone else was watching  on TV, when we had to wait to use the phone because our sister was talking to her boyfriend, when our identities were more static because we didn’t have multiple online platforms that constantly required our updating.” ["You can keep your cellphone: The landline is my lifeline" by Leah McLaren, Mar. 20, 2010]

“You get the sense that you’re someone else’s entertainment. Your life is a product and that to me is a frightening idea.” ["RIP, virtual me: Saying good-bye to Facebook" by Jacquie McNish, Apr. 5, 2010]

PREVIOUSLY: Keanu Reeves helps Buffalo feel less holiday hopelessness

The Art of Marketing, a one-day $399 six-speaker conference at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre — promoted in the above video — had at least a few of its 1,200 attendees tweeting like it’s 2009, despite no Wi-Fi on the premises. But this bunch just wants to be inspired — a decade ago, companies had to turn to former college football coaches to deliver those 21st century pep talks. Now, enough geeks have perfected their spiels to offer advice on selling absolutely anything! And, just like the horoscopes in the newspaper, the platitudes are kept general enough to apply to everyone. There is no room for error when virtually nothing said is capable of stirring argument.

“It’s not about how many you reach, it’s who” offered Mitch Joel, president of Montreal shop Twist Image, the kind of line whose effectiveness is verified by the number of repeat tweets. “Your brand isn’t what you say it is,” he added, “it’s what the search engine says it is.” And, with 20 per cent of Google searches never having been done before, the possibilities must be infinite. Mitch is all about the “FREE HUGS” — as immortalized in a 2006 YouTube video with 56-and-a-half million hits that, it turns out, plenty of TAOM attendees had never seen before. The fact that he knew that qualifies as marketing genius.

Seth Godin’s definition of a genius: someone who solves a problem in a way it’s never been solved before. But he is also evidently into deciding what to talk about only after doing an audit of the audience. So, the Buffalo native got the “Hello, Cleveland!” part of the presentation out of the way first — referencing The Candy Shoppe, an independent operation along Highway 11 between Orillia and Gravenhurst. “Marketing has become leadership!” he pronounces to the right room. “People want to interact with brands that mean something!” “No big brand has been built by interrupting people!” “If there is a manual, what do I need you for?” Most importantly, these lines come in well under 140 characters. More radical is Godin expressing that school was invented by industrialists to train people to do what they are told, how board game Candyland is a ploy to turn kids into factory workers, and that anxiety is nothing but failure in advance. And it all comes down to art! “The ability to act without instructions,” he explains.So, while a few of those tweeting found Godin kind of ridiculous, someone got him to autograph their Kindle.

Nine seconds! That is the length of the average attention span today, and the starting point for Sally Hogshead, the longtime advertising creative director who wrote FASCINATE: Your 7 Triggers of Persuasion. Mystique! Power! Lust! Prestige! Alarm! Vice! Trust! She developed something called the F Score to test how fascinating you are — and, among this crowd, how could you be anything but? The rest of us have the attention span of a goldfish. Then, for some reason, she broke out the liquid Valium.

James Othmer, who recently wrote a pretty cynical book about hunting for the next Subservient Chicken at his old day job, Adland: Searching For the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet, is evidently not above turning up at these events. “How many of you creative marketers are lost in the Nincompoop Forest?” he asks. “How effectively we tell our stories is today’s best strategy” — conceding that “strategists don’t play well in this new model.” Maybe this is why Othmer is banking on a literary career instead while knowing there’s a role for a miscreant to work the marketing conference circuit. No hard sell is involved, though — after all, his idea of a Twitter persona is Don Draper’s Bastard Son. But without any speaking notes, he offered no Twitter-compatible takeaway, at least until the very end: “Branding is a tension between art, commerce and ethics.”

UPDATE: There were two late-afternoon speakers, “experiental marketer” Max Lenderman and Made to Stick co-author Dan Heath — the latter receiving this kind of conference’s equivalent of a standing ovation: proof of people paying attention to his talk.

McNally Robinson Booksellers have joined CISS-FM “new country” radio proponent Rawlco Communications and Toronto One television owner Craig Media as media companies from Western Canada that fizzled fast in Toronto. But, since a retail store isn’t licensed like a broadcaster, all they can do is hastily depart the premises leased from Shops at Don Mills developer Cadillac Fairview, now left with a conspicuous vacancy. This week, a tractor-trailer is pulling up to the outdoor mall, to be loaded with inventory being hauled to Saskatoon for a bankruptcy sale. Tory McNally, dispatched east last year to manage this outpost of the business her parents started, wouldn’t wish the custom-built school board-esque location on their worst enemy: “Indigo would be crazy to move in here,” she told Quill & Quire, “but they’re welcome to it if they want it.” The eight-month life of McNally Robinson in Toronto followed about two years of planning — when their Winnipeg independent retail legacy was exported by another daughter to New York City, where the store now operates as McNally Jackson, it seemed natural for Toronto to get one too. And while area opposition to a prefab lifestyle centre in Don Mills filling the space of a dowdy indoor mall inspired Toronto Star columnist Christopher Hume to write the whole thing off, the anti-Cadillac Fairview faction behind the website Don Mills Friends thought the bookstore was the only redeemable part of the revamp. Printed words were never the entirety of the McNally business model, though: the Prairie Ink restaurant was built into the shop, evoking the department store cafeterias of yesteryear, but with a fancy menu, and quotations from the likes of Philip Roth on the wall. Perhaps, in the spirit of the centre’s Douglas Coupland clock tower inspired by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation constructions that shaped the country’s first suburb, all the neighbours wanted was a new place to get a warm tray of chicken pot pie, bowl of Jell-O cubes on the side.