Ben Schott
Ben Schott is a British writer and author of the "Schott's Miscellanies" and "Schott's Almanac" series.
Ben Schott was born in North London, England on May 26 1974, the son of a neurologist and a nurse. He has one brother, also now a neurologist. He went to school at University College School, Hampstead – both the junior school in Holly Hill and the senior school in Frognal.
University
Schott went to Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, where he read Social and Political Sciences. At Cambridge he was a regular photographer for the university student newspaper Varsity (Cambridge). He played college hockey, cricket, and croquet – though not to a very high standard. He was also a member of a number of dining societies, as well as being secretary of the Shakespeare Society – one of the oldest undergraduate societies in Cambridge. He took a double First in 1996[1].
Advertising
After Cambridge, Schott got a job at the London advertising agency J. Walter Thompson where he was as an account manager on the Nestlé Rowntree account – working on Smarties, Kit Kat, and Polo. After only four months he resigned to become a freelance photographer.
Photography
Schott worked as a photographer from 1996-2003, specialising in portraits of politicians and celebrities. He was commissioned by a range of editorial and commercial clients, including The Independent, The Sunday Times, Sunday Business, Reader’s Digest, and the Institute of Directors. A profile in The Times said "his subjects included John Prescott, who was rude, and Sir Roy Strong, who had “the most wonderful, doleful eyes” and told him: “You must realise I’m awfully photogenic.” Tony Blair asked Schott if he’d like to see then-baby Leo; Cherie barked at him not to take too long as they were about to have lunch.” [2]. His photographic portfolio is online. [3]
Schott's Miscellanies
As The Guardian wrote of Schott’s Original Miscellany, the first of Schott's three Miscellanies titles, “the idea for the book came from home-made Christmas cards that Schott sent to friends. They were no ordinary cards, but consisted of little booklets containing all of the essential information he supposed that one needed to get through life, but could never find”[4]. Schott typeset the book himself and had 50 copies privately printed by the Pear Tree Press in Stevenage. After sending copies out to his friends, he sent one to the CEO of Bloomsbury, Nigel Newton. As Newton told the Boston Globe, “I was completely bowled over when it arrived on my desk. It was a work of striking originality, and it was remarkable to receive an unsolicited submission like this in the mail. I immediately passed it to one of our editors, who signed it up.”[5]
Schott’s Original Miscellany was published with little fanfare, but an article by Stuart Jeffries on the front page of the Guardian’s G2 section on 6 December 2006 changed everything. Describing the book as the “publishing sensation of the year", the article said that “Schott has hit the list motherlode”. Sales raced up, and within weeks Schott’s Original Miscellany was at No. 1. Robert McCrum said of the book in The Observer: “Originality is like charisma. It's hard to define, but we know it when we find it ... Schott's Original Miscellany is without doubt the oddest, and possibly merriest, title you will come across in a long day's march through the shimmering desert of contemporary publishing”[6].
Schott followed up the success of the Original Miscellany with two sequels – Schott’s Food & Drink Miscellany and Schott’s Sporting, Gaming, & Idling Miscellany. While both bestsellers (Schott had two books simultaneously in the Sunday Times top ten) – sales did not match the runaway success of the first book. In part this was because of a vast swathe of copycat books designed to look and feel exactly like the Schott formula. One of the most shameless copies was Robson's Books' Companion books, which ripped off the Schott style with an entire series. The director of the company, Polly Powell, admitted to Publishers Weekly that “the writers of all the Companions are good writers, and Ben Schott is a fantastic writer"[7].
The Miscellany trilogy has sold well over 2 million copies, and has been translated and adapted into dozens of languages, including French, Russian, Greek, Swedish, Italian, and Japanese.
Schott’s Almanacs
The first edition of Schott's Almanac was published in Britain in 2005 – now, yearly editions are published in Britain, America, and Germany. The Almanacs share the same look and feel as the Miscellanies – but are substantially longer and larger. Each edition is different (the German version is in German), although some content is shared or adapted. The British edition has sections on The World; Society; Media & Celebrity; Music & Movies; Books & Arts; Science & Technology; Parliament & Politics; Form & Faith; The Establishment; Sport; and an Ephemerides section that contains traditional almanac information on dates, moon phases, and the season. The Sunday Times called Schott’s Almanac "a social barometer of genuine historical value”; the Boston Globe called it “One of the oddest and most addictively readable reference books in print”. Schott introduced the 2006 Almanac with a quote from Ben Hecht: “Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock”.
Journalism
For two years after the publication of the first Miscellany, Schott wrote a weekly miscellany column for the The Daily Telegraph, as well as producing special miscellany features on Christmas and The Olympics. For over a year he wrote a regular travel miscellany column for the UK edition of Condé Nast Traveler magazine. In 2005 and 2006 the Guardian featured special editions of G2 featuring extracts from Schott’s Almanac.
Schott now writes regular features for the Times, and is a contributor to the OpEd page of the New York Times.
Schott publishes a bespoke Miscellany Diary with the society printers Smythson of Bond Street, and a desk-pad diary with Workman. A range of Miscellany-ware products is in the pipeline.
Design
Schott typesets all of his books and most of his articles – now using Adobe’s InDesign after apparently abandoning QuarkXPress. His books are noted for specifying the precise design tools (fonts, leading, etc) that he employs. He has regularly acknowledged the influence of the work of Edward Tufte in influencing the look and feel of his books[8].
The characteristic cover illustrations for his books are created by Alison Lang, and the drawing inside the Almanacs are by Chris Lyon.
In 2004, he won a D&AD award for the design of Schott’s Food & Drink Miscellany[9].
Controversy
On March 12, 2007, the New York Times appended the following editor's note to Schott's essay, "Confessions of a Book Abuser":
An essay in the Book Review on March 4, "Confessions of a Book Abuser," by Ben Schott, defended the ways people physically "mistreat" books. Readers have subsequently pointed out a number of resemblances between Schott's essay and "Never Do That to a Book," an essay on the same subject by Anne Fadiman that was part of her 1998 book "Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader."...
Questioned about the similarities, Schott, who has recently been contributing freelance work to the New York Times, said that he had never read Fadiman's essay before it was brought to his attention, also by a reader of the Book Review, and suggested that the thematic resemblances were a coincidental result of the narrowness of the topic. He maintains that the encounter with the Italian chambermaid took place as he described it, in 1989, when he was 15.
Had editors been aware of Fadiman's essay, the Book Review would not have published Schott's.
On March 24, 2007, Editor & Publisher revealed close similarities between Schott's opening paragraph and Fadiman's opening paragraph.
Schott has vigorously denied claims that he copied Anne Fadiman’s work. He told the BBC: “I read Anne Fadiman's essay after a reader pointed out similarities in our anecdotes, and I was shocked and upset by the coincidence. My encounter with the chambermaid took place in Menaggio, on Lake Como, in July 1989. I was 15, and on a family holiday. The experience was a formative one - but, as it turns out, not unique”[10].
Much of the debate over the similarities in the passages centres around the word “chambermaid” which – while uncommon and archaic in America – is a commonly used word in Britain. A number of people have commented that the experience is not unique, and that such an act is utterly inconsistent with Schott’s provenance as a writer.
Miscellany
Miscellaneous facts about Ben Schott:
- he plays the drums in a funk band;
- he has always wanted to be the host of I’m Sorry, I Haven’t a Clue[11];
- he drives an old 1967 Mercedes;
- he is on the advisory board of the reference website Xrefer;
- he collects cufflinks;
- GQ readers voted Schott one of their Men of the Year in 2003 – but he declined the award[12].
Footnotes
- ^ The Daily Telegraph, December 2002. "Ben gave up a pension - but his trivial pursuit has become a serious success".
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|1=(help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ The Times, 4 November 2006. "The devil of the details".
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|1=(help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ "Schott Media".
- ^ The Guardian, 6 November 2002. "The bare facts".
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|1=(help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ The Boston Globe, 7 November 2006. "He's a real gee-whiz kind of guy".
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|1=(help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ The Observer, 8 December 2002. "God bless you, Mr Schott".
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|1=(help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ Publishers Weekly. "Does the World Need More Miscellany?".
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|1=(help) - ^ The Independent. "Book of a lifetime".
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|1=(help) - ^ "D&AD awards 2004" (PDF).
- ^ BBC News Online, 28 March 2007. "Schott denies 'plagiarism' claims".
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|1=(help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ The Guardian, 12 November 2005. "If you haven't a clue".
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|1=(help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ The Guardian, 14 October 2006. "Maximum volume".
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