Happy Endings

There's this note, a pitch, I should say, that "literature" (and do mind that the word has four syllables and two beats: lit-er-a-ture) has this singular pitch it "should" always end on. Not sour, not depressing, exactly, not wholly devoid of happiness, and not even quite final. It is like, at the end of a good long stare (for us contact wearers) when the world begins to blur because the plastic has gotten dry, we are forced to blink. But we don't finish the blink. We only know that we must blink. That is the note. And it makes me cringe, I have to admit, when I come across it. When I write it. And don't get on my case for so many italicized words, because I do know when I press Control+I consecutively, and I do (most of the time) do it intentionally.

In any case, there is this note that I hear over and over again, and frankly, I'm coming down with it, and that makes me turn a sickly gray. Because it's what we're taught, you understand. We are instructed in our narrative arcs, so that each one ends succinctly at that glorious pot of gold, which is not, I might add, considerably artistic, and is, actually, I feel, somewhat generic. At this time. It is tradition, though. And woe to the writer who confronts tradition and grimaces, and then smiles politely, hoping the grimace had gone unnoticed--or, if it was noticed, that tradition has such a big head that it assumes the grimace was aimed at some foul stench produced (but, of course!) by the writer h'self (my gender-neutral reflexive pronoun).

Well, yes, if you mention it, I am in a sort of mood. Because I just realized that that note is the one all my stories long for, as if they were addicts, as if they were star-crossed lovers. Pining! It's damned embarrassing!

So I'm looking for an AA (or some such) group that'll help them get through it. Each of them.  Because, dear Grimm, though I'm fond as the next of your poor princesses who end up escaping their enemies with the help of the Big Bad Wolf's intestines, it's just not my cup of fictional tea anymore, you understand. I'm keen on Wolves and Little Reds who come to their senses. I'm appreciative of bargains wrought between Cinder and Stepmother. Compromises, you understand. I mean, really. You don't expect to hold a continuing monopoly on story endings into the 21st century, do you? Times, my dear Brothers, have changed, and the world may not be as bleak and sorcerous and damned dismal as it was when you wrote of it. And certainly not as final. No.

Oh! where is the heart, my fellow writers? Have you left it pumping, bleeding somewhere in the hands of villainous education? And though your ending may not be happy, where is the lifeblood that should flow through it, and through it, and through it, so that the reader can never be rid of it, never be cut off from it, find it bursting through the most mundane moments of life and on into death and beyond into eternity! If there is not death, and not eternity, at least into the next moment, at least beyond the closed cover.

I am tired, tired of this one note, my friends. Do not be deceived as to its glory. Does it sing? Can you hear it afterward? Does it break something in your chest when you hear it? Is it the laughter of the nations that are to rise, the roar of the Eternal applauding, its rush of tears, the sound of forgetting . . . ?

(I am only a little inebriated.)

Oh, how I want a new song to sing.

Reading List

An assignment for class: Make a "canon" of books/writers you consider important to contemporary literature. Addendum: Include your favorite 20 writers.

This is a compilation of fellow students' addenda, specifically to include those writers/books that received more than one mention (or that are particularly awesome, but mostly the former; particularly awesome books/writers shall be denoted by an asterisk).

In no particular order....

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Ernest Hemingway*

William Faulkner

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Kurt Vonnegut*

Cathedral by Raymond Carver

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Virginia Woolf

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin*

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein

Madame Bovary by Flaubert

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Anna Karenina by Tolstoy

In the Heart of the Heart of the Country by William Gass

To the White Sea by James Dickey*

J.D. Salinger

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Conner

James Joyce*

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Micahel Chabon

Night by Elie Wiesel

This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Feel free to add....

Recipe for Brandy Baked Pears

Thanksgiving Dinner consists of...

1) Thirteen people this year, counting me:

Mom (who is 50; also, this is the occasion for our being in the Big Apple for the Macy's 150th Anniversary parade; Dora was the crowd favorite judging from the swelling chant Dora, Dora, Dora!); Peter, my younger brother who is old enough now to take part of the Alcohol (the sheer volume, daily replenished, was an event in itself); my older brother Guy, Teacher of Euro Games; Khary, my husband's Jamaican ex-roommate; Reneé, who works for the Zimmerman Agency doing PR and, for touring the Roosevelt Hotel, got her entire vacation paid for (and yes, the accent mark is supposed to be on the wrong "e"); my aunt and uncle, Ree and Jules, respectively, celebrating their 29th anniversary and finding nothing at Tiffany's to spend $20,000 on; Stephanie, their daughter, whose avatar is a wolf; my husband, Ernest, who brought long johns and waterproof jacket to aforementioned parade and wore neither (his nose reddens just at the tip--a round, distinct pink, like a doll's!); Reneé's parents, Leonard and Kathy (and just as a side note, couples really are comprised of discrete people, here unfairly lopped together by lazy journalism), who are bested in contests of conversation volume (oh, ambiguity) and silliness only by their daughter; and David. David is a random kid from Auburn L and K picked up at Young Frankenstein (they initially met him at the airport) because he'd booked a trip to NYC without making plans (or having money) for a place to stay. Lucky kid. Got to partake of our fabulous mélange of Thanksgiving Day entrées and sides.... and dessert, newly minted by me, for baked pears, mmmm!!

2) 2 Kitchens, included in the Queens flat + random kitchen equipment.

3) Devil's Shrimp, recipe courtesy of Angel Johnson (shrimp and tomatoes flamed in a brandy and lime, dusted with crushed red pepper); Mom's Roast, recipe dating from before the "liberation of women"; Glory Shrooms (mushrooms boiled in Glory base and white wine); BBQ Meatballs (secrets: maple syrup, garlic, crushed red pepper, and lime zest); steamed asparagus (place bushel of asparagus upright in microwavable heavy, flat glass after snapping off ends, add water 3", cover with plastic wrap and secure with rubber band, microwave for 5 minutes on high); good 'ole stuffing; lots of alcohol...

4) And dessert. Mom revisited her first-ever birthday cake which had been in the shape of a turkey, only this time it was an ice cream cake--which went very nicely with my Brandy Baked Pears. (I had been craving them all week long, impatiently watching the organic fruit stands as the Bartlett pears slowly softened and yellowed to their most aromatically delectable; I'd been planning to just eat them all! Juicy sweet.)

So, the recipe:

5 Bartlett pears, ripe
maple syrup
2 tbsp butter
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup brandy
4 tsp white granulated sugar
cinnamon
broiler pan bottom

Preheat oven to 450. Core and slice pears in eighths. Set aside. Drizzle maple syrup into the bottom of the pan, in sweeping back-and-forth motions. Add butter and water. Heat in oven until butter melts. Tilt pan to stir. Add pears, turning them in liquid until all surface areas are completely covered. Do not stack. Pour brandy equally over all pears. Dust with half the sugar and cinnamon to taste. Bake on center rack for 15-20 minutes. Remove and turn each pear. Dust with the rest of the sugar and more cinnamon. Return to oven for 20-25 minutes, depending on ripeness of pears. Broil for 5 minutes. Serve.

Delicious!

Many thanks to Reneé and Kathy for cutting, and to Khary for extracting pan from hot oven.

A Job Description and A Report

Over turkey and cranberry sandwiches on rye with a light sweet mustard and iced tea, Claire asks me what I've learned so far from the work I've been doing with her agency. I must admit, I evade the question. I patter a bit, explaining that I like doing such and such, and that I prefer this or that, and that I still wanted to learn more about X, and, do you know, I was looking around at the websites of other agents and you, Claire, just seem to be different.

So, of course, we discuss the fact that she operates in not just an "author-friendly" manner, but in a "people-friendly" manner, and that she is a breath of fresh of air in the publishing community.

The question asked vanishes under a load of other work needing to be dealt with. But it remains in the back of my mind, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that my evasion is not one resulting from a lack of reply, but just from a lack of a coherent reply. I understand that for Claire—who is, of course, paying me—the question is deeply important, not just a curiosity. So it is in my and her best interest to present the summary that follows: a job description (so far) and a report.

I read. Queries, bios, proposals for non-fiction, and partials (usually a few chapters, say, 20-50 pgs) for fiction. Sometimes entire manuscripts. What genres? Oh, pick one, really. From mystery to health, memoir to thriller. Not fantasy though (ah, my ever-love).

What Claire gives me is the stuff that's already passed first muster, if you will. It's the stuff that isn't proposing a 200,000 word first-time author's masterpiece, or a 29,500 word "gripping" novel. First off, no one in their right mind is going to publish a first-time author if the piece is 200,000 words long. (I queried my first book at this length. AHH!) Try <100,000 words. Now, we're getting somewhere. Second, "a novel should be as long as it needs to be," Tina Wexler, lit agent, said once, but really, word count matters. And never editorialize in a query. Your stuff is "gripping" if your agent says it is. So, I don't have to bother with all that.

I get stuff Claire's already scanned, manuscripts with first graphs she's enjoyed, non-fiction proposals she sees a market for, etc. And then I plunge in. And this is where, I feel, Claire Gerus really departs from other agencies. A typo on the first page? Not a problem. We're looking for content, for substance, for characters that come to life, for plots that *** (the word choice represented by these asterisks was ruthlessly abused by my writing partner, and I have not yet come up with a suitable replacement) the vast array of well-placed clues at exactly the right moment, for writing that's consistent and readable. Is language important? YES! But is the requirement high diction or soaring prose? No. Know the genre, and if you're trying something new, the character had better be of such depth that the language matches the character. Really, that's what's important. Is the outfit "finished?" Do accessories match? Are the shoes of the same spirit; should the hair be up or down? Chic, professional, fresh, lyrical, haunting, smart, up-market (cross between literary and commercial), sassy. The language should fit the character like an outfit and be consistent over all.

I get work with problems. I've been learning to see a story for its possibilities. Does this author have beautifully round characters but an unbelievable plot? Is the plot there, but do we need depth of character? In the story I'm working on right now, page 2 needs to be cut. Chapter 5 and 6 should be inverted. Chapter 5 (now chapter 6) needs a rewrite to give a huge chunk of boring back-story the immediacy that will encourage readers to keep reading. A professor of mine gave me some good advice: "Don't write the parts that readers skip." Good grief! But we all do it; and some of those absolutely boring parts are our most precious babies. "Murder your darlings"—Fitzgerald.

I'm learning about covers. The packaging (yes, all you elitists out there, myself included; packaging) is nearly as important as the text inside. Honestly, as a consumer, if I'm browsing the shelves at local Antigone's, I look at the spine for an interesting title, check out the cover, scan the back, read the first page, read page, oh, 78, and then, if I'm still into it, buy it. Covers are crucial. Does the title, does the art, do justice to the book? We just had a book put on hold by WAL-MART because the title didn't do it for the acquisitions person there. Is the art catchy? Is the author's name big enough? Does the spine visibly show title, author, and publisher? Is the font readable—and in a readable color? (You wouldn't believe how many first cover options are just unintelligible. People can't see light yellow on white too well.) Is the subtitle big enough, not all squished together in a ribbon at the bottom? These things really do matter.

Like any business, negotiations are tricky and contracts are like gold. A good agent will fight for her author. A good editor will fight for her agent.

This brings me to a great HORROR (thanks, Conrad): A summary of the adventure: from mind to shelf, and the green involved (tangentially).

You have a brilliant novel just completed. You are the luckiest person in the world.

You query an agent who accepts your work. Your agent sends out to an editor who takes on your opus. The editor presents in 30 minutes to the publishing house's board/panel (say 6-7 people); convinces all 6-7 people that your work is important, salable, etc. With your editor's help, you polish the thing. Your editor goes to an acquisitions meeting held quarterly by a megalith buyer. She has 5 minutes now to pitch all 30 books for her publishing house, yours included. Barnes and Nobel accepts the sale of your manuscript on their shelves. Meanwhile, your agent passes you her favorite PR person to whom you pay up front, say, $5000 to promote your book for three months. Ouch! Why? Because if all the copies of your book do not sell within six weeks or so, remaining copies go back to the publisher. And yes, the royalties come out of your pocket.

Thank God, you're the luckiest person in the world.

Other stuff later.