Confessions of a Plot Reader

So... For all my literary aspirations, mostly snobish choice in books and criticism of modern prose, I confess: I am The Empress and I am a plot reader.

I am such a plot reader that, yes, I occasionally do enjoy literary 'candy.' In fact, as much as it shames me to confess this (can I do it? CAN I...?) Well... I actually enjoyed the clunky prose and predictable outcome of The Da Vinci Code... I also felt totally ashamed for having liked it when the book was so incredibly put down by serious readers, literary critics and writers all over -- from my then book club, to literary circles/blogs/articles on the internet and in other media. So, I've been struggling with this for a while... If I liked 'that atrocious book', does than make me a mindless moron fit to read nothing but cotton candy?

Well... Not necessarily... I mean, I enjoy literary fiction as much as the next very snobbish reader, but the point remains, like in my previous post: who cares how incredibly well-written a book is, how miraculous its prose, how beautiful its imagery, if it has no plot or if the language, use of allegory/metaphor/whatever is just so high-level, so rich that nobody cares to read it because it doesn't really tell a story or the story is depressing, or only 3% of the population even gets what said story is even about?

And, in any case, it's not like I ever thought The Da Vinci Code was a masterpiece of modern literature or anything, but I did think it was engaging enough and a fast read... 'Decent' (yes, decent) airplane literature and nothing more. And I can totally understand how, regardless of its faulty prose, overabundance of cliches and other gazillion literary faults, it made it to the top of the best-seller list for god knows how many weeks in a row. It simply rehashed AND successfully marketed a contentious theory that's been out there forever. Let's face it, even in this day and age, and in the Western world, anything that challenges age-old religious dogmas/beliefs, is automatically interesting to a huge percentage of the population -- hell, that's the reason why I went out and bought the book. Dan Brown merely figured out how to profit from one of said challenges on traditional beliefs. Then he added a dash of this and a dash of that, and tossed everything like a great big nonsensical salad of secret societies and imagined church conspiracies. I'm amazed he didn't throw in the Masons, too, or the International Order of Oddfellows or the Sunshine Sisters (or did he? I can't remember... So memorable the cotton candy lit was...), or imply that somehow McDonald's and Coca-Cola were profiting from said church conspiracies, too (again I ask: did he?) So, he took from here and there to create the theme, tossed in a couple of cardboard characters and form mystery settings, chases, 'twists', and voila: you have a genre piece.

That's right: A genre piece. A light, fluffy, cotton candy genre piece. Not literary or even general fiction, where the writing itself is generally expected to be better. A genre piece. And the point remains that, no matter how much everyone has torn it to pieces, they finished the book. If it were that atrocious, wouldn't they just simply stop reading?

I liked it because it did what I figured it would do: it entertained me. It was a breeze to skim past the repetitive or cliched language and focus on the immediate, on the fact that I was being entertained... much like watching a blockbuster movie: you pretty much resign yourself to the fact that it's going to be bad and/or full of cliches and... well... either enjoy the ride or get out of the movie theatre... If you go see a good art flick, instead, then enjoy, deconstruct, analyze to your heart's content... It's the same with books: people who want to enjoy a smart, stimulating read will pick up something by Carol Shields or Alice Munro or Anne-Marie MacDonald... You don't go and pick up something as media-hyped as Harry Potter or The Da Vinci Code and then whine about how lousy the writing was, how predictable the plot! Let's face it: media hype is for the masses -- the same masses that watch American Idol and other reality tv crap and demand more of the same. The same masses that just want to be entertained. And while I draw the line at reality tv, and mostly read 'intelligent' fiction, I do enjoy the odd immediate satisfaction book (namely the two examples above)... who cares if the prose/plot could be better? Sure as hell, Dan Brown and J.K. Rowling don't give a flying f*&k. They're set for life, and no matter how badly their work is criticised, they won't have to worry about money or work ever again. I'm pretty sure that's got to give them some comfort if they still bother to read negative criticisims of their ouvre.

Wasps and Politicians

They're pretty much the same, that's all I've got to say -- that's all I can say, without revealing too much.

Suffice it to say that yesterday I had a brief run in with both species and it only reminded me of two things:

1)I hate them both
2)They're not that different from each other

Funny how things worked out, too: that morning I was terrorized by two (2!!) wasps INSIDE my boyfriend's house. I'm terrified of the damn things, as laughable as it may seem to many (mind you, I'm allergic even to mosquito bites, so that renders my terror of bigger stingers at least a degree less pathetic than initially presumed). Well, now I strongly suspect there might be a wasps' nest somewhere in that house, as these two were the fifth and sixth we've killed inside since the winter. Anyway, there I was, carefully making my escape after killing one of the evil buzzers with a can of Raid, and my literary, fanciful, allegoric mind, was thinking... "hmmm... if ants and bees simbolize work, mosquitoes, annoyance, and large flies, death, I wonder what wasps simbolize?"

On I went with my day, hearing paranoid buzzing wherever I went -- well, only for about half an hour... Then I forgot all about it... Until...

In the late afternoon, I had a DISGUSTING meeting with a politician and his staff. It just reminded me (as if I needed a reminder!) how much utter contempt I hold these people in, and why. Underhanded, self-important little dweeb. For obvious reasons, I can't go into detail. Suffice it to say that one of my meeting peers was left all shaky and as disgusted as I was, and that I was automatically reminded of my wasp experience in the morning... And it just all seemed to fit so perfectly!

I so need to find a different job! One that doesn't require for me to even peripherally deal with these Wasp-People. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done in this town...

But, hey, maybe I'll get a request for a partial and then a full and then I'll have super-star literary agent who'll get me a killer deal with a big house, and my book will sell like hot cakes, and I'll be free to do what I really love, without having to worry about money or dealing with politicians ever again!

Gotta keep up the positive thinking here.

Harry Potter and the Great Mystery of Publishing

So... Now I've read all 7 Harry Potter books and seen all 5 movies... Plus, I decided to go back and re-read the entire series, now that I know the -- shall we say, punchline and see how/if everything fits together now... All this, as I begin the horrible, soul-crushing process of trying to procure a literary agent for my own work. In fact I got my very first form rejection yesterday... Yay me! I'm officially an author in seek of representation -- my novel is no longer just clogging up my hard drive.

But I digress...

My point is, on this second read-through of the amazingly overhyped adventures of the boy wizard, I'm noticing more things... I mean, I own the damn books, so I obviously enjoyed reading them, thought they were a cute little story that had a bunch of universal themes/morals without being preachy. They're great little books (not so little, lately), no one is disputing that. I also think they're fairly well-written, without any pretention at being what they're not, and I am enjoying my second read-through... BUT, now that I'm paying more attention to the detail of craft and language, the truth is the Harry Potter books are peppered with cliches and the prose is at times a bit on the clunky side (sometimes, more than just a bit). I'm not saying they're badly written -- they're not... I'm just saying they're not stellar, either. And yet, look at what's become of them:

Breaking sales records world-wide, making more money that a book's ever made before and, basically, creating an unbelievable hype.

So, again I ask: how the hell did J.K. Rowling get away with this?

A first-time author with no writing credits. A single mum on welfare. Somehow she got an agent and somehow that agent sold her book to what at the time was a small publishing house (I wonder where they both are now -- Bloomsbury Publishing and Christopher Little Literary Agency... I mean, aside from sitting next to their indoor pools, enjoying the millions they've made on Rowling's series...) And, the word count for the first book was apparently HUGE for books for the wee folk.

So, again I ask: how did this happen?

Luck? Talent? Perseverance? A case of reaching the right people at the right time?

I truly think it must have been pretty much the latter... And that's all any aspiring author can really hope for. Agents keep saying in blogs, interviews, articles and their agencies' websites, that they're looking for 'stellar writing' and for 'certain' things in the first sample pages sent with a query -- such as action, the introduction of the main character and not a hell of a lot of backstory, for example... Then you go to the closest bookstore and start reading the first pages of the latest best-sellers (by both debut and established authors), and what do you find? Backstory. Main character not introduced until Chapter Two. Exposition. Over-writing. All of the above.

Of course, this is not always the case, but there is a lot out there that starts out like that.

Take Kostova's The Historian, from my previous post: the first page of the book (NOT her prologue), is a lot of exposition and backstory. No scenes, no action, no real sense of setting. And yet, an agent (statistically, likely more than one) asked for a partial (and then a full and then offered representation, but that's not the point I want to make today).

Now, there's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: the first couple of pages introduce the Dursleys, who are not even real nemeses of Harry's. In fact, we do not even hear about Harry until page 4 (and that's a very incidental mention) and we don't see the little guy until the next chapter.

Still, at least one agent asked to see the partial and then the full.

So, once more with feeling: how the hell did this happen?

Answer: The right person just happened to see Rowling's query at the right time. That's all. Hell, if he'd seen her query on another day, when he was perhaps in a different mood or had more to do, his answer might have been different altogether (i.e. a 'sadly, this is not right for us' form response) Perhaps she would've found another agent. Perhaps not, and these days we wouldn't be experiencing the greatest literary marketing phenomenon of all time.

I'm not going to delve into another rant about the great marketing machine behind Harry Potter... That is what it is: a cutesy little book, a cool idea and fair (NOT stellar) writing pushed to superstar status by genius PR.

Today's rant is about the first steps. The first queries, the first pages, the first form rejections, the first requests for partials and then fulls...

Everyone on the shelves today -- from J.K. Rowling, to Dan Brown, to Norah Roberts, to Arthur Golden and Barbara Kingsolver, Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje (sp???), had to start out somewhere. And, let's face it, of all of the above, only Ondaatje has veritably STELLAR writing... no one understands what the hell he's writing about, but he has beautiful use of language and high metaphor. Of course, this means that he doesn't sell as much as Dan Brown and Norah Roberts, who's language use is geared pretty much to the lowest common denominator, but that, again, belongs in a different rant...

The point is all these people had to query different agents and swallow rejection letters until someone had a good day and 'got them'.

It's a subjective business and there's no way around that. One agent's great find will be buried in another's slush pile. That same agent who said no today (maybe because she's looking for southern fiction right now), might say yes to the same project several months later, when she's in fact more actively looking for chick-lit or whatever.

As for me, I plan to keep querying until the right agent 'gets me' and is as excited about my book as I am. I know it's a good read. I know there's a market niche for it. And I know the setting, theme and characters all have traits that set this apart from other works in the genre. So I guess it's just a matter of time, heartbreak and patience. And perseverance.

And I'm going to keep every rejection letter and email I get, so that when my novel is an international best-seller, I can send signed copies of it to every agent that rejects me now, enclosing a copy of my original query and their form responses to it -- not in a mean way... Just as a gentle reminder that every day, because they're so overworked and overstressed, they might be missing out on something good.