What do authors think of their publishers? I’m not talking about “to their face” but “in their heart of hearts”.

Here’s one publishers’s view, found on the internet a while back. Unfortunately, I’ve lost the reference so he has to remain anonymous.

Authors really don’t like publishers. They don’t like us because we change their work, or force them to. We reject their titles. We dress their books in jackets they hate.

We take custody of their manuscripts and refuse visitation rights. We don’t let them see or comment on marketing plans. We spend very little money or time promoting their books.

Our royalty statements might as well be in Aramaic. We don’t return their voicemail or email. We don’t communicate and we don’t care.

Sure, that’s an over-generalization, but it’s too close to the truth for comfort. It should concern us that so many authors feel this way about their publishers. And it’s our fault, really, for not communicating better about exactly what we do, and why.

It’s certainly honest and suggests he may be a better publisher to his authors than he thinks.

In a New York Times article headed, “I Have a Nightmare”, Nicholas D. Kristof lamented the “death of environmentalism” in America. It has passed on, he suggests, because it’s now “empty of nuance”.

Nuance? Do we need it? Hasn’t it all but disappeared from modern culture? Wouldn’t “red in tooth and claw” be a better way to get noticed? Isn’t nuance the last resort of the terminally confused?

On the contrary, I believe the nuance factor defines our writing and thinking much more than how we handle the big slab issues. In many ways it’s the essence of crafted writing, which, at its best, reflects a well-stocked mind and a subtle, receptive soul.

Nuance is the backbone of every powerful statement. The art of creative authorship lies in how we deal with nuances and how we make them interesting. Shades of meaning and complexity show that we can appreciate points of view other than our own.

The great writers manage to make complexity simple. They keep the thread moving on while allowing the loom of their creativity to weave a tapestry along its flanks. Nuance is often the missing link between the truth and political statements.

Carl Jung’s work with German author Richard Wilhelm on the Chinese classics, the I Ching, The Secret of the Golden Flower and The Book of Consciousness and Life, brought his considerable intuitive intelligence to bear on the “problem” of time.

Ultimately he believed that every moment has a time-signature, a character that confers a common nature to a time-moment regardless of spacial separation. Compare this with Dogen’s notion of Being-time.

Jung termed this coincidental factor Synchronicity to explain the persistently prophetic nature of the I Ching when used as an oracle.

Japanese Zen master, D. T. Suzuki concurs, “As with Buddhists ‘Here’ is ‘Now’ and ‘Now’ is ‘Here’. The idea developed in regard to time also applies to space.”

It is clear that Jung’s mental furniture comprised all the elements necessary for a full participation in the rich philosophies of the East, with their almost total concentration on the path to spiritual enlightenment.

At his home in Switzerland, Jung carved the following words on a block of stone, “Time is a child - playing like a child - playing a board game - the kingdom of the child.”

We know that time and space can’t exist without each other, and come into existence together, like Siamese twins. What exists in space also exists in the concurrent segment of time, so can’t be separated.

Over at Syntagma, John Evans writes about his early passion for the works of Dostoyevsky.

When I was in my teens (duck out now or take the consequences), I developed an unhealthy taste for the books of Dostoyevsky. The first one I laid my hands on was A Raw Youth, in the exquisite translation of Constance Garnett.

The work is an extended essay on frenzy. The youth in question stumbles around 19th-century Russia in an advanced stage of frenzied excitement. He clearly mirrors the psychological state of its author.

Read Dostoyevsky, frenzy and plastic bags.