I will be inviting people from the literary and publishing community to blog here in the near future. There are many writers, publishers, editors and authors out there who have some amazing insights into the world in which I now live. I’m excited to hear from them. I hope you are, too. If you have any desire to contribute, send me a note.
Archive for August, 2010
Writing Outside the Lines
Thursday, August 19th, 2010
I’ve said in previous posts that reviews, and the critics who give them, are subjective. They are based on opinion and nothing more. Now, some opinions are given more weight than others: a great review in the New York Times weighs heavier than the one from Harriet in Hoboken on Amazon. Or does it?
While I write in a certain genre, I am a huge fan of the literary novel. So, when I read a novel that I feel is a literary marvel, I talk about it. One such novel is Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. The story centers on a nine-year old boy, Oskar Schell, whose father died in the 9/11 attacks. He is an odd boy, this Oskar. He wears only white, wears gloves on his hands, and has yet to meet an adverb he didn’t like, hence the title. In the first few pages of Foer’s book, Oskar runs through a litany of ideas—what he calls inventions—that are fascinating and very much beyond his nine years. I was immediately drawn in, wanting to see what he came up with next. What he comes up with next you must read for yourself. You will either love it, or you will hate it.
What I want to focus on here is Foer’s use of different mediums within the confines of a book to tell his story. Foer takes us back and forth between Oskar’s narrative, which consists of his wild inventions and his search for a father who left him too soon. In Oskar, we see a boy hanging on by a thread (he often ‘gives himself a bruise’). He finds a key inside an envelope while searching through his father’s closet post 9/11. It is a heartbreaking scene in which he goes into the closet to get closer to the man whose voice on a phone message tape after the attacks is all he has left to hold on to. On the outside of the envelope is written the word BLACK, and Oskar sets out through the five boroughs of New York to speak to every person named BLACK in an effort to find out how his father died. Foer takes us on a journey through Oskar that is funny and heartbreaking. Foer also tells another story, bringing forth the tragedies of Hiroshima and Dresden through letters written before Oskar’s time. The letters are placed on the page with gaps and misspells and odd formatting that, to me, is a daring and bold way to present literary work. Another page is from an art store Oksar goes to, wishing to speak to the manager about what BLACK could mean. The page is covered in words, all in different colors, like you would find near the pens—people test the pens to see how the color shows up on paper. Foer also has, dispersed throughout the book, photographs of a lone figure—seen so many times after 9/11—falling out of the burning twin towers. With this haunting photo, we are reminded of Oskar’s torture at not knowing how his father perished. Perhaps the answer lies with this key.
Foer takes chances with this book, and coming on the heels of his critically-acclaimed first book, Everything is Illuminated (which I have not read), I can only assume that his agent and his publisher had no qualms about offering a book that was so—out there. Here are some comments about Foer and Extremely Loud and Incredibly close:
“Foer isn’t just a bad author, he’s a vile one,” said the New York Press shortly after Foer’s debut was published. Adding him to the their list of “Most Loathsome New Yorkers”—which he’s been on three times in five years—the paper later fulminated, “Joyce Carol Oates invented this Jewish mother’s wet dream in a Princeton laboratory, and now we have to live in a world where eager-to-please frauds like Foer receive unearned comparisons to geniuses like Burgess and Joyce.”
(www.gawker.com/5583306/jonathan-safran-foer)
And this one-star review from an Amazon reader, titled Extremely Tedious and Incredibly Lacking:
I read the book all the way to the end because I thought that surely there would be a point to page after page after page of precocious non-punctuated musings by this boy. Unfortunately, there was no point to the musings.
I suggest you save your money because there is no closure at the end of the book. It is a rambling, long-winded, and twisted tale.
(www.amazon.com/Extremely-Loud-Incredibly-Close-Novel/product-reviews/0618711651/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_1?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addOneStar)
Wow, right? I liked Foer’s comment in one interview in which he said the following in response to a comment by the interviewer that a book is more than just a piece of merchandise:
JSF: A book is an intimate object whether you are conscious of it when you are writing it or not. A book is something that is seen with the eyes on a shelf, pulled off the shelf with the hand, taken home. What percentage of people do you think read a book in bed? 80? 90? People read books in bathtubs. People read books in their easy chairs with their glass of wine or their coffee, their cat.
I also liked his comment about the role of reader and reviewer:
JSF: I did a reading last night at Boston College and I was thinking about it. There were more people in the audience than will review my book—in the country. It’s very tempting to attribute too much weight to one kind of person over another. Like, a publisher’s opinion is not more valid than a reader’s opinion. A reviewer’s opinion is not more valid than a reader’s opinion. A reviewer’s opinion is not more valid than a non-reviewing reader’s opinion. It’s just that some people work in areas—carry bigger microphones, basically.
(www.themorningnews.org/archives/personalities/birnbaum_v_jonathan_safran_foer.php)
So, does the great review in the New York Times weigh heavier than the one from Harriet in Hoboken on Amazon? Foer doesn’t seem to think so, which makes me feel a bit less queasy that the LA Times hasn’t yet grabbed onto Testarossa, but Hot Novelist, an Amazon reviewer, loved the book.
With all that said, Foer does something so incredible at the end of the book that it sat in my gut for days after. I will not give it away. I will simply say that for the writing, the gall and the emotional roller coaster that is Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, it is worth the read. I admire any writer who can go to the edge like Foer did with this book, and make me, a reader, feel the things that I felt.
Do Reviews Really Help?
Thursday, August 12th, 2010
I was in the market for a new coffee pot a while back. I wanted a high-falutin’ one that maintained the water temperature at 120 degrees, produced an even spray over the coffee grounds (because I was told this distributes the flavor evenly, or something), and was no more than 15 ¼ inches tall. I found one. It was the highest ranked coffeemaker on Amazon, as well as on other sites that boasted expertise in such things. I read all the reviews—even the one and two-starred blurbs. I weighed the pros and cons, and after careful debate, I decided that I could handle turning the difficult-to-see dot to the correct position for the perfect pour (Some customers had trouble in this area). Based on such high praise, I spent obscene amounts of money on this miracle appliance, and was so pleased with it that we bought a second one (my husband has recently begun to favor unleaded joe, and I don’t like to wait).
So, how important are product reviews? As a new author, and the creator of a product, I’ll be frank: to me, they are very important. Is it because I believe they are truly helpful? I can state unequivocally that I do (see above). But I also like to know that people like (or not) my book. Look, I’m thrilled about my 5-star reviews on Amazon—all seven—as well as the feedback I have received on Goodreads and that old stand-by, email. I love that people have emailed, or texted, or called to say that they ‘flew through the book’, or, now that they’ve finished reading it, they ‘miss the characters, and hope I’m working on the sequel, and when will it be finished?’ I love hearing that the romance in the book reignited sparks, caused a little tingle in places a tingle hasn’t touched in a while, or simply reaffirmed how love can—and should—feel, even if it is only fiction. I love hearing that the people who love me love the book, and it is an even bigger thrill when people I don’t know discover the book and say they loved it. But I also want to hear where I fall short. What didn’t you get? Where was I unclear? What didn’t ring true? I had one reviewer say that, at first, the chapter prefaces—John Testarossa’s backstory—was confusing, but she soon caught on and ended up enjoying that part very much. May I share that both my agent and my editor hated those chapter prefaces, and at least one publisher, in passing on the manuscript, mentioned the backstory was not a highlight for her, either. I took them out and added them back a few times before the book was published. I realized that perhaps the reason why I was receiving such feedback was not because the chapter prefaces, or backstory, was a bad idea, but that perhaps the failure was in the execution. I focused on making those chapter prefaces the best they could be, because I believed they were an integral part of the story. John Testarossa is the man he is because of the boy he was, and I wanted the reader to feel that, connect with it. I worked hard in the many rewrites and edits to make that part of the story clear, because the feedback told me I had fallen short. On the other hand, two police officers read the book and shared with me that the story rang very true for them—one even asked if I was a cop. That was some incredible feedback. It confirmed that the most difficult part of the story, for me, was done well. That was a relief. I can write the love. The other is hard work, and I got it, ‘nailed it’. The men who work the job told me so.
Now that I’m a published author, I review more. I see now how important it is, and I do it even when I can’t exactly give the highest praise. I don’t read as a reader anymore, sadly. I read as a writer, so I am most critical of bad writing. I work incredibly hard at the writing—I make sure you can smell the decomposing body, feel the ache in your chest over the loss of a life, or feel that dip in your stomach as the most intimate words are spoken at that perfect moment. Did the writer put you there, or was it more like a fly-by? What gives me the greatest pleasure, of course, is sharing with potential buyers of a book what thrilled me the most, what made me not want to put it down, and what I admired about the writing. In the end, it is all very subjective—it is opinion. My taste is not yours, and vice versa. In the end, we give our opinion, and hope that we can help our favorite authors sell a few more books if the opinion is favorable. Know that I take reviews very seriously, and I appreciate the time it takes to write a thoughtful one. All authors do.
Take the time to review your favorite books—not just mine, although you can feel free to do that, too. Share that intimate relationship you had with that book with the rest of us. I want to know what you loved about the book you love—and what you hated. Drop me a note and tell me what your favorites are, and why. And then direct me to your review. I’d love to read it.
