Subtitles be gone!

Robert McCrum of the The Guardian recently called for a cease and desist on the use of subtitles in books. He cited a newly published biography of William Golding, which includes the admittedly odd and somewhat limiting subtitle: The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies.

I’d hate to think that a biography of me would be subtitled: The man who wrote Something Missing. Sure, it’s true, but doesn’t this subtitle imply that I didn’t do much else?

McCrum also cites the use of forgotten subtitles in classics like MOBY DICK (The Whale) and ANIMAL FARM (A Fairy Tale), as well as the lengthy subtitle in Christine Hardyment’s MALLORY: The Birth, Life and Acts of King Arthur, of his noble Knights of the Round Table, their marvellous Enquests and Adventures; th'achieving of the Sangreal, and in the end the dolorous Death and Departing out of the World of them All.

To be honest, I kind of like Hardyment’s subtitle. The length alone is funny as hell, and I think I’d make a game of trying to remember it. Give out prizes at readings to anyone who could recite the subtitle from memory.

McCrum’s argument is that the subtitle is often a tool used by authors and publishers who feel the need to justify and further explain the book. He believes that the subtitle is a sign of weakness, a lack of faith, an unwillingness to allow the book to stand on its own merit. Just in case a potential reader doesn’t know that William Golding wrote LORD OF THE FLIES or that Moby Dick is a whale, the subtitle is intended to help.

But as McCrum so aptly states, if you didn’t know that William Golding was the author of LORD OF THE FLIES before you saw the subtitle, it is unlikely that the subtitle would convince you to purchase the book.

You’re either a William Golding fan who wants to read the man’s biography or you’re not. The subtitle won’t make you into a Golding fanboy.

I agree with McCrum, but I thought that adding to subtitles to books might be amusing. For example, if I were to add a subtitle to SOMETHING MISSING, what might it be?

SOMETHING MISSING: The story of a thief named Martin.

SOMETHING MISSING: The missing something is a double entendre, referencing both the items that Martin steals as well as the things missing from his own life.

SOMETHING MISSING: Not quite a mystery, not quite suspense, and not quite humor. A frustratingly indescribable combination of all three.

Any other ideas?  Or any subtitles that you’d like to add to other books, for amusement’s sake or otherwise?

Turkey for the win

My wife’s uncle and her cousin came to Connecticut to visit last weekend. My wife served sandwiches for lunch. Always looking to take care of me, she made me a bologna sandwich while she and her guests ate turkey.

I’ve noticed lately that bologna is getting a bad rap. In the two times that I’ve eaten this delectable lunch meat in the last couple months, people have been surprised by my choice, referencing it as the sandwich meat of the young. Both times, the critics admitted to enjoying bologna but implied that they had left it behind for more mature meat.

A First Corinthians sort of spirit:

When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.

Of course, on this particular day, I was eating turkey bologna, which meant that we were all eating turkey.

Mine just tasted a lot better.

When death interrupts the writing process

I passed the manuscript for UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO onto a friend who has yet to read it. When I asked him what was taking so long to finish, he admitted that he no longer was in possession of the book. “I gave it to my aunt, who was afraid that she might die before the book was published. She loved SOMETHING MISSING and wanted to read your next one now, just in case.”

That’s quite a compliment.

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article about the new wave of novels being published posthumously from writers like Vladimir Nabokov, David Foster Wallace and Ralph Ellison. Having experienced my own legitimate brushes with death in the past, I think quite a bit about the prospect that I might be hit by a bus in the middle of a book and never have the opportunity to finish.

It’s an unsettling thought, leaving characters frozen in time, their stories untimely cut off. And perhaps it’s a sentiment that Stephen King also battled with when writing his Dark Tower series. In that series of novels, King inserts himself into the story, becoming both the writer as well as a character who must be saved by the very characters about whom he is writing. When King was nearly killed after being hit by a van (an incident that occurs both in real life as well as the book), the protagonist, Roland, warns his maker to finish his tale and to stop dawdling. One cannot help but wonder if King is exorcising his own fear of death and the unsettling prospect of an unfinished novel when issuing Roland’s warning to the fictional version of himself.

But unless an author retires, I guess that he or she will always have an unfinished piece of work. Right?

And even when an author does retire, this is not always the case.

After publishing TIMEQUAKE in 1997, Vonnegut announced his retirement, causing me to begin a purposely slow and methodical reading of his final novel that has taken me into my eighth year. Knowing that no other books were coming from one of my favorite writers, I decided to read about a page a week, re-reading constantly but stopping myself from ever finishing the book, fearful of what life might be like without a new Vonnegut sentence in my future.

Since he died, however, one collection of stories and essays (ARMEGGEDON IN RETROSPECT) has been published and another (LOOK AT THE BIRDIE) is due out later this year. Though I’m not sure how I would feel about someone purging my computer for all my unpublished stories and essays, I’m certainly pleased that someone has taken the liberty in the case of Vonnegut.

And so I am honored that someone has requested my manuscript in fear of her eminent demise. In fact, the same thing happened to Stephen King in the midst of writing his Dark Tower series. A woman in Vermont who was facing terminal cancer wrote to King after the publication of the fourth or fifth book of the series, asking if he would share the fate of Roland, Eddie, Jake and Susannah with her before she died. Unfortunately, King writes in much the same way I do, waiting for the story to flow from his fingers, absent of planning and arduous forethought, so he had no idea how his series would end and therefore could not grant the dying woman her request.

As long as my friend’s aunt does not request my current manuscript, I can keep at least keep her happy.

Brandi Terry is a big fat idiot

I’m a huge supporter of writing, regardless of the type, author or genre.  Just yesterday I told my mother-in-law that I wish that everyone was writing a book. So many good stories and talented writers go undiscovered when people fail to pick up the pen.

But there’s also a time to stop writing and drive the damn car.

I was listening to a story on NPR yesterday about texting while driving entitled High-Tech Solutions To Help Deter Driver Texting. Here is an excerpt from the story, which you can listen to here:

Two years ago, Brandi Terry was a 17-year-old high school junior. She was driving one day to visit her grandfather in northern Utah.

"I woke up to a bright light — I could barely open my eyes — and paramedics. This man was saying 'Brandi, Brandi,' and I just started crying. I didn't know what had happened," she says.

Terry had run a red light. Police checked her phone and discovered she had sent a text within seconds of the accident. Terry shattered her right ankle and broke her upper right arm in half. She couldn't walk for six months and had an agonizing recovery. She got better, got another car and tried to stop texting.

"I tried really, really hard not to," Terry says. "Then it got to the point where I would do it only once every 5 minutes. I would rarely do it — it got to the point where when I was alone in the car, I would do it," she says. "I don't know — it's just so addicting, I just can't put it down."

Within a year of her first accident, Terry did it again — she slammed into the back of semi while she was texting. This time, she escaped injury.

The story goes on to ask if people are ready to stop texting while driving, and it describes a device that will disable a cell phone while a person is in a car in an effort to help people like Brandi stay safe on the roads.

Regardless of whether or not this is a valuable piece of technology (doesn’t the power button on the phone serve the same purpose without the added expense?), it would seem to me that the heart of this story is not the newfangled technology that disables cell phones but the simple fact that Brandi Terry is a complete and utter moron and dangerously stupid.

After a recovery that snapped her arm in two and prevented her from walking for six months, she said (I know I’m being repetitious, but it’s so astoundingly stupid that it’s worth reading again):

“I tried really, really hard not to. Then it got to the point where I would do it only once every 5 minutes. I would rarely do it — it got to the point where when I was alone in the car, I would do it. I don’t know — it’s just so addicting, I just can’t put it down.”

In the words of my wife:

Really?

This girl is driving and texting every five minutes?

This is not alcohol that we are talking about. This is not nicotine or gambling or OxyContin or any other legitimately addictive drug.

This is texting to friends about boys and clothes and homework and the mall from the same device that is capable of making a phone call. And even though speaking on the phone while driving is also distracting and dangerous, it is exponentially safer than texting. Yet after nearly perishing in an accident as a result of her texting, she is doing it again less than a year later and is still wrecking her vehicle in the process.

Even if texting were addictive (WHICH IT IS NOT), one need not text while driving. Many alcoholics and drug addicts manage to refrain from using their substance of choice while driving, and I have yet to hear about a compulsive gambler playing blackjack or roulette while driving.

Besides, If you must text, Brandi, pull over.

Upon reflection, I would like to propose a change in the title of this story to:

Brandi Terry, despite any amount of intelligence that she may possess, is an idiot who must be removed from the roads immediately and forever.

It’s a little wordy, I know, but at least it’s a more accurate representation of the story.

Am I being harsh? I don’t think so.  Frankly, I think that NPR’s Jenny Brundin let Brandi and the other idiot teenagers who she interviewed off the hook, failing to challenge statements like:

"I love texting and driving; it's the in thing. Everyone does it — who doesn't?"

Brundin couldn’t come up with one decent follow-up question to a statement like that?  Not one?

Apparently not.  If she did, it did not make an appearance in the story.  

Harsh?  I would contend that calling a 19-year old girl a dangerous idiot only seems harsh until she plows into your own car while texting and driving for a third time, killing a loved one and maiming you for life.

Then words like dangerous and idiot may seem trite and a tad inconsequential.

Luke and Luc

Have you ever noticed the difference between the names Luke and Luc? 

Luke, pronounced as it appears, is the name of a guy who could be my friend.  Strong, independent, and manly, it is a name that bespeaks of confidence and vigor.    

Luke Duke from the Dukes of Hazzard, a man’s man even with his unfortunate choice of automobile decoration. 

Luke Perry, former teenage heartthrob and often-forgotten (and rightfully so) star of Joss Whedon’s film version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

Luke Skywalker.  The greatest Luke of all time, and probably named in honor of his creator, George Lucas. 

Then there’s Luc, pronounced by puckering your lips, extending your jaw, tilting your head slightly upward, raising your eyebrows, and sounding utterly ridiculous.  It’s the way that Jean-Luc Picard, the laughable and tragically absurd captain from Star Trek: Next Generation, pronounced his inexplicably hyphenated first name.

Luc. It is not a good name.  

It does not bespeak of confidence or vigor

It does not connote strength or independence. 

One would never want to be photographed while saying this name.  Doubt my assertion?  Go find a mirror. 

It is impossible to shout in an emergency.  Don’t believe me?  Try shouting this:

“Luc!  I’m over here! To your left, Luc!”

or….

“Luc!  I’m open!  Pass me the ball, Luc!”

It can’t be done.

It is a ridiculous name. 

These are the things that I think about when choosing a character’s name.

The half-finished book

Suzanne Munshower of The Guardian writes in praise of the half-finished book, celebrating her willingness to put a book down prior to finishing it if the story no longer captivates her.

I’m not sure how I feel about this.

Being a somewhat compulsive person, I often feel the need to finish a book even if I am no longer enjoying it, and many times I do just this. Sometimes it works out. There was a moment in Wally Lamb’s I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE when I was ready to close the book and move on, bored with the storyline and the pacing of the novel, but I persisted despite every inclination to do otherwise and was rewarded with a game-changing fall from a ladder that propelled the book forward to the end and made my willingness to persevere pay off.

But in the last year, I can also name at least three books that I stopped reading somewhere in the middle, deciding that my time could no longer be wasted on a story that did not interest me. While I was happy to recapture the time that I might have invested in reading those books, they will always loom over me, making me wonder if things might have changed if I had read just three more pages.

I utilize the notion of the half-read book into my writing process. One of the things that I have learned to keep in mind when writing a book is pacing. Today’s reader is simply too impatient to allow a book to slowly develop, which unfortunately seems to be my tendency. Gone are the days of the idyllic plot development of Jane Austen and Henry James. Plots must now take off immediately, and the pace in which the story is told must be brisk and unwavering. Today’s reader is a fickle, impatient individual who demands instant gratification.

How annoying.

At readings and book signings, I often address this topic by blaming my audience’s lack of patience for making my life more difficult than it need be. “If you would all just chill out and give my book a chance, I could write it the way I want to write it,” I often say. “Give it fifty pages, for God’s sake!”

Smart move. Huh? Chastise the very people who have chosen to come out and support you as an author.

But I’m curious where other people stand on the half-finished book. Is this something that you do frequently, or like me, does the idea of not completing a book weigh on your mind and leave you always wondering if you’ve made the right decision?

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, I assume that you didn’t put SOMETHING MISSING down halfway through. Right?

Consider the source

Sometimes the best compliments that you receive about your book comes from the most meaningful sources. 

High school English teacher Bob Stewart listed SOMETHING MISSING as #5 on his list of Top 10 books of the year.  Having great affection for English teachers everywhere, this meant a lot to me.

And last week, one of my former students wrote to tell me that he chose to include SOMETHING MISSING as part of his summer reading and wrote his first paper of the year on the book, arguing that it constitutes “great literature.”

I’m not so sure about his thesis, but his words meant a great deal to me.

Visiting Westport with Margot Berwin

Last night author Margot Berwin and I spoke about our recently published novels at the Westport Public Library in Westport, CT. As was the case a few weeks ago when we both appeared at the Wilton Library, it was great to be able to sit alongside Margot as we discussed our books, the publishing process, and writing in general. Knowing very few authors, I look forward to the opportunity to swap stories with writers and am always surprised to discover how many simultaneous similarities and differences exist in our professional lives.

In addition to talking about our books and reading a bit, Margot and I took questions from our audience. Ironically, I was asked the same question that I asked Nicholson Baker just a couple weeks ago: Do your readers project certain characteristics of your protagonist upon you? In Baker’s case, I was specifically wondering about THE FERMATA, the story of a man who can stop time in order to undress woman.

Baker’s answer was a qualified yes (the ability to stop time in order to undress women was Baker’s adolescent fantasy), and mine was an unqualified absolutely. Friends, relatives, newspaper reporters, and even a few readers who have taken the time to write to me have asked me if I have ever engaged in burglary in the past, and a handful have openly doubted my innocence.

But I also admitted that projecting certain aspects of my protagonist upon me makes perfect sense. Martin, Milo (who you will meet next summer) and Wyatt, the protagonist in my current manuscript, all possess certain character traits that are my own. Some are written about intentionally, but others, as improbable as it may seem, were unconscious in the making.

For example, as I think I’ve written about before, many of the strategies that Martin utilizes in his career; his excessive planning, his methodical routines, and his constant vigilance, are qualities that I developed while dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder. But as I imbued Martin with these characteristics, I was blind to their presence in my life.

Martin and I are also about the same age, and Martin lives in the same apartment that I lived in back in 2003.

Martin has a father who he has not seen in more than twenty years. Until recently, I also had not seen my father in almost twenty years, yet this similarity in family circumstance went unnoticed by me during the writing of the book, as impossible as that may seem. And in a bizarre fiction-meets-reality scenario, like Martin, I was recently reunited with my father, partly because of the book.

Even our names are unintentionally (though my former therapist might argue subconsciously) similar.

Yes, my readers project certain character traits from my protagonist onto me, and yes, they rightly should in many cases.

How many similarities do Milo and I share? I’m not sure. Milo is facing the prospect of divorce, and several years ago I went through a divorce as well. We both love our dogs. We both love hot dogs.

As for the rest?

I’ll wait for people who know me better to illuminate me on other, unintentional similarities next summer when the book is published.

The Island of Misfit Books

Sometimes I ponder the fate of my books. Will anyone read them a hundred years from now?  Will libraries still have them on their shelves? Will they even exist? 

Or even worse, will one of my books end up in a place like this?

Be prepared.

Martin, the protagonist of SOMETHING MISSING, rehearses conversations.  He must.  He is socially inept, and the only way that he can function effectively in the world is through advanced preparation.

Though I am not socially inept (I hope), I also rehearse conversations from time to time, but I do so in order to avoid this.

A float has to float

Attempting to improve on my ability to craft dialogue, I find myself listening to people more and more, eavesdropping on conversations and taking careful note of a person’s choice of words.  Today I was in Carvel, waiting to order, when the woman in front of me was handed her root beer float.  She looked at it, paused a moment and then asked, “Don’t you mix these up?”

Obviously, the woman was a lunatic to assume that a root beer float should be mixed like a shake.  The word float implies that the ice cream should be floating in the root beer, and not spun in like some mutated Dairy Queen Blizzard.

But what I noticed even more was her use of the word don’t instead of the word do.  Note the difference in tone between the two questions:

Don’t you mix these up?

Do you mix these up?

The use of the word don’t implies accusation.  It makes the speaker sound rude, condescending, and annoyed.  It’s not a nice way to solicit the desired bit of information from the counterperson.      

The use of the word do essentially turns the same question into an honest search for information, with no tone of accusation or annoyance whatsoever.

Just think: One simple word change could have made this woman’s ridiculous question at least sound sincere and polite, but instead, she came across as a complete jerk.  

Which undoubtedly she is. 

Good to keep in mind when writing dialogue. 

I was tempted to instruct this woman on her poor choice of words but chose instead to remain silent.  Though I don’t do it often, I am capable of restraint from time to time.  

The woman behind the counter then asked for my order.

“A root beer float, please,” I said, speaking louder than necessary.  “But you don’t have to mix mine up.  Just make it like a root beer float is supposed to be made. With ice cream that floats. No special orders for me.”

The woman with the float-turned-shake harrumphed in my general direction, attempted to argue that "”lots of people have their floats mixed up” and exited the store in a blustering huff, dragging her bedraggled son behind her.  She was not happy with me.   

So much for restraint.

Difficult to defend Dan

Dan Brown seems to be taking a lot of abuse lately.  I guess when you sell almost 100 million books, you make yourself a target. 

After all, success breeds envy, jealousy, stupidity and downright cruelty.  I have my own experience in such matters and can assure you that this sad fact of life is true.

With these thoughts in mind, I was prepared to come out in defense of Dan Brown, author extraordinaire and bestselling novelist, whose first two books I found to be entertaining, albeit farfetched, stories. 

What do these critics know?

So what if his prose doesn’t crackle like that of Philip Roth or Toni Morrison? 

How can millions of devoted readers be wrong?

Then I stumbled upon Tom Chiver’s list of Brown’s worst twenty sentences and Brian Davis’s proposed edits of Brown’s work (a fascinating read). While I might shudder over the prospect of a similar examination of every sentence in SOMETHING MISSING, these two critics advance a formidable position on the weakness of Brown's writing, and they base their opinions on irrefutable evidence.  

I’m not great with physical description, but this example is probably one of Brown’s worst:

Captain Bezu Fache carried himself like an angry ox, with his wide shoulders thrown back and his chin tucked hard into his chest. His dark hair was slicked back with oil, accentuating an arrow-like widow's peak that divided his jutting brow and preceded him like the prow of a battleship. As he advanced, his dark eyes seemed to scorch the earth before him, radiating a fiery clarity that forecast his reputation for unblinking severity in all matters.

In the words of Chivers:

Do angry oxen throw their shoulders back and tuck their chins into their chest? What precisely is a fiery clarity and how does it forecast anything? Once again, it is not clear whether Brown knows what ‘forecast’ means.

And I might add that the whole damn paragraph is overdone, with one too many simile and metaphor. 

Like I said, a sentence-by-sentence examination of SOMETHING MISSING might also yield a few clunkers, but the list of problems that Chivers and Davis assemble is daunting. 

Of course, I must ask:

Can any of the blame be laid at the feet of his editor?  I’d like to think that my editor would be wise enough to save me from a sentence like:

Although not overly handsome in a classical sense, the forty-year-old Langdon had what his female colleagues referred to as an ‘erudite’ appeal — wisp of gray in his thick brown hair, probing blue eyes, an arrestingly deep voice, and the strong, carefree smile of a collegiate athlete.

First peek at UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO’s cover

I got my first peek at the proposed cover art for UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO today, and I love it.  There are a couple of tweaks that I think need to be made, but overall, my first reaction was quite positive.

This is good.  My initial reaction to the cover of SOMETHING MISSING was less than favorable, but I’ve come to like it a lot as well.  

When the cover is finalized and I’m permitted to share it with you, I’ll be sure to post it here. 

Prior to becoming  involved in the publishing world, book covers meant little to me.  I do not have a good eye for design and my attention to the visual realm is sometimes nonexistent.  While I can often remember every word spoken in a conversation from days ago, I often cannot tell you what color pants I’m wearing without looking down.  But ever since I saw the cover art for SOMETHING MISSING, I’ve started to pay attention, and while the cover of a book would still not influence my purchasing decision, I can now see how one book might stand out above another because of the appearance of the cover.

Recently, the miserable cover to WUTHERING HEIGHTS received a refresh after the book was featured in the plot of TWILIGHT.  Attempting to capitalize on Stephanie Meyer’s success, the redesigned cover attempt to capture some of the essence of the TWIGHLT cover, and while it feels a little cheap and commercial, anything is better than that original art. 

Instead, I have always been drawn to the titles of books rather than the art.  Intrigue me with a good title and I’ll give your book a shot.  Titles such as EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES, THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHTTIME, and THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE have caused me to purchase these books without any knowledge of the story inside, while a bad title is likely to keep me away.  My wife is a huge fan of Sharon Creech’s YA novel WALK TWO MOONS, but the title (and cover art) is so lousy that I cannot bring myself to read the book, despite my wife’s ardent recommendations.

And titling a book isn’t always easy, as I well know.  Neither of my books were titled by me, and I have no title for the book that I am writing other than THE CHICKEN SHACK, which will surely change upon completion. 

And speaking of changing titles, The Guardian had an interesting list of rejected titles for well know books that I found quite intriguing.  My favorites include:

Trimalchui in West Egg, the original, and I might argue better, title of THE GREAT GATSBY.

All’s Well that Ends Well, the unbelievably upbeat original title to WAR AND PEACE.

High expectations

I was reading through my contract for UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO, preparing to sign, when I came across the section entitles Description of the Work.  It provides a basic summary of the book, probably included in order to prevent me from slapping the title UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO onto the cover of my 900-page volume on the various mating habits of dyslexic earthworms and submitting it in the place of the real novel. 

All fine and good, but the first sentence of this description begins:

“The Work shall a funny novel about…”

Funny novel?  Amusing, perhaps, but funny?  That’s a lot of pressure on me.  Don’t you think?

Ice cream connoisseur

You know that your wife takes her ice cream seriously when she requires five minutes of online research before deciding upon a flavor. 

Before leaving the house, I had to commit her preferences to memory.  The list, in order of preference, was York Peppermint Patty, World Class Chocolate, or Gold Medal Ribbon.

I ordered strawberry, but I’ve always had a less sophisticated palate.   

Upcoming appearances

Just a reminder of upcoming appearances for anyone interested:

On Monday, September 21, I will be at the Westport, CT public library with author Margot Berwin to discuss our debut novels. 

On Tuesday, September 29, I will be appearing at the Berlin-Peck Memorial Library to read and discuss SOMETHING MISSING.  

Hope to see you there!

In the presence of Nicholson Baker

On Friday night I went to RJ Julia Booksellers to listen to Nicholson Baker, one of my favorite authors, speak about his new book, THE ANTHOLOGIST.  Baker became one of my favorite authors when my agent recommended his work to me a couple years ago, suggesting that we share similarities in style.

While this may be true, it’s sort of like comparing a mountain to a molehill.  We may have a similar shape, but the comparison ends there. 

He’s truly a literary giant. 

Despite the esteem in which I hold the man, it was odd watching one of my heroes stand in the same room, in front of a similarly sized audience, and do what I had done just a month or so before.

For a moment, I almost felt as if I were Baker’s peer. 

Adding to the diminishment in his grandiosity was the fact that he was almost an hour late, trapped in horrendous traffic coming out of New York.

“Traffic?” I thought.  “Why aren’t the state police escorting him to Madison?  Don’t they know that we have Nicholson Baker on our state highway!  Why isn’t a man like Nicholson Baker immune to traffic?  He doesn’t have time to waste sitting inside a car!  He needs to be writing!”  

As the minutes ticked by, he began to seem more and more human to me.  “If traffic can slow this master storyteller down, perhaps he’s not so special after all.”  So when he finally walked in, flustered and apologetic, struggling to find the button on his jacket as he began to speak, I had started to think of myself as a fellow writer, a comrade in arms, just another one of the guys.

Nicholson Baker and me.  Two guys doing the same job. 

Then he began speaking, reading from THE ANTHOLOGIST and explaining the process by which he wrote the novel, which began by sitting in a white, plastic chair in the middle of a stream and videotaping hour upon hour as he dictated the first draft aloud.  And as he spoke, describing this intricate process and the amount of re-speaking and revising that went into the creation of the book, his stature increased exponentially until I once again felt like that molehill nestled in the valley of his Everest.

Damn that man is smart.  And committed.  And creative.  

By the time it came for him to sign my copy, I was awestruck once again.  In fact, when he asked to whom he should address his signature, I said myself, forgetting my justifiably annoyed wife who was sitting two feet away.  Sure, he was a little late, and yes, he spoke in the same venue as me, to about the same number of people, but that is where the extend of his ordinariness ended. 

Nicholson Baker my peer?  What could I have been thinking?

I am little more than a scribbler.  He is a writer. 

In the course of his discussion, I asked him about how people often associate qualities of a protagonist with an author, and how that might have come into play when writing THE FERMATA, the story of a man who can stop time in order to undress women.  It’s a book that my agent recommended, but when doing so, she asked that I don;t think of her as a pervert for enjoying it. 

It’s quite raunchy. 

He was honest about the issue, explaining that the story originated with his adolescent fantasy of doing just what his protagonist could do, and that his wife found the story interesting and amusing, though she also felt that the protagonist should have been punished for his indiscretions in the end.     

I guess that even the great Nicholson Baker can’t please them all. 

Must listen

I have always recommended the RadioLab podcast to all of my friends, but I cannot recommend this week’s episode on Parasites (yes, parasites) highly enough. Turn off the television tonight (unless you’re watching the Patriots on Monday Night Football) and give it a listen.  It’s better than anything you’ll find of the tube.

Except for football, of course. 

SOMETHING MISSING: the audio book

I just spent the last three minutes listening to a sample of the audio version of SOMETHING MISSING, which was released by Recorded Books last week.

I love it.  The newly designed cover is excellent, and the narrator, Jefferson Mays, is brilliant.  He captures the voice of the narrator effortlessly. 

I find myself wanting to hug him.   

It was also utterly strange to hear another person read my words so well.  Sentences flowed with ease.  The inflection was spot on.  Even his actual voice suits the narrator perfectly.  

Dare I say that the story has never sounded as good in my head as it did on this audio version?

I think so. 

Stupid, annoying plot

I often bemoan the importance placed upon plot in the current literary environment.  Being a writer who does not have a plot in mind when he begins a book, I tend to focus upon character first, and as a result, my work can sometimes be rambling and unfocused, especially in its first draft.  In revising UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO, several characters and scenes were ultimately cut from the novel because they simply did not propel the plot forward. A conversation with my agent or editor might go something like this:

Not me:  What’s the purpose of this character?

Me:  I dunno. Isn’t she interesting and kind of amusing?

Not me:  Yes, but how does she fit into the story?

Me:  I dunno. A minor yet clever diversion?

Both my agent and editor are kind enough to let me down as easily as possible by saying things like, “She’s a great character, but maybe she wasn’t meant for this book” or “Perhaps you can post this chapter online after publication, as supplementary material?”

They are nice and maybe even right, but I am left wondering why all things must serve the plot.  Why can’t a book have a more meandering, character-driven approach to it?  Why does everything in a story need to propel the action forward?  Why does conflict need to be introduced so early? 

This topic comes up quite often when I’m speaking to people about my book, and when it does, I usually put the blame right where it belongs: upon the shoulders of my audience.

Not nice to blame your audience and fans, I know, but it just might be true. 

The modern reader, I am told, does not have the patience for a slowly develop, slightly meandering plotline.  If a book doesn’t grab the reader’s attention in the first twenty pages, it is often abandoned.  In today’s climate, the conflict must be introduced early and the plot must be advanced at all times. 

How annoying that an army of impatient readers impact the way in which I write. 

The along comes this article on the state of the novel from The Wall Street Journal, written by Lev Grossman, which contains this dreadful line:

If there's a key to what the 21st-century novel is going to look like, this is it: the ongoing exoneration and rehabilitation of plot.

Damn.