I just began reading Mark Haddon’s The Red House. Haddon, you might remember, is the author of the highly acclaimed The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and the even more brilliant (in my opinion) A Spot of Bother. Haddon is, I believe, one of the best fiction writer’s out there today. I only got three sentences in to The Red House before I had to stop to read and reread and gush over a particular sentence, which is so finely crafted it almost makes me want to just give up writing because I will never be able to write anything this good.

“Seventy miles per hour, the train unzips the fields.”

Boo-yah!

Allow me, if you will, to unpack the beauty of this one sentence. There is, of course, the metaphor in here of a train, which, when combined with its tracks, looks like a zipper connecting the fields on either side. A stunningly apt metaphor, I think. Yes! That is exactly what trains look like.

But a metaphor is only as good as its connotations. What does the metaphor of a train as a zipper add to the text, you might ask. The image of a train as a zipper, unzipping (and not, it is important to note, rezipping) the world around it brings along subtle ideas of something burgeoning beneath the surface, something hidden that is about to be revealed. A pretty perfect opening to a novel, don’t you think?

But this sentence is brilliant for reasons beyond the fitting metaphor it couriers to the reader. This sentence is so elegant, so concise and economic in its language choices that the elegance of the metaphor can shine through. Many novice writers, or even decent but not brilliant ones, would have felt the need to expand the metaphor, to build on it or linger in it a bit longer to make sure the reader really gets it, notices how brilliant the metaphor’s creator is.

Another writer might have written, “The train looks like a zipper, its tracks the zipper’s treads. Quickly, it zooms across the tracks, unfurling the fields on either side,” or something along those lines. But what would that writer have added, for all those extra words? Fourteen extra words—more than twice the length of the original sentence—and no new meaning expressed. Yes, the reader is for sure going to notice the metaphor, but at what cost?

Beside the fact that it’s wordy, and unnecessary wordiness always feels self-indulgent to me, the new sentence is less subtle. Where the original sentence drops the metaphor on the reader and then lets the reader decode it and tease out the subtext, the new sentence tries to force the meaning on you: Look here! A metaphor about things becoming unfurled! That’s what’s going to happen in this novel! (That’s right, this other writer probably likes to use exclamation points.)

In spite of all these newly added words, the new sentence is also less exact. Where the original sentence just stated, explicitly and in four words, the exact speed the train is going, the new sentence rambles around the topic but never gets further than to tell us it’s going “quickly.” This other writer probably thinks the meandering sentences are more “poetic,” but really, they’re just verbose and imprecise.

And while we’re on the topic, should we point out that there are no adverbs in the original sentence? No. Of course there aren’t. Because expert writers rarely use adverbs. I know, I know. I used a lot of adverbs when I was first starting out too. I peppered my sentences with “quietly”s and “firmly”s and “sheepishly”s, and so on. There are a lot of reasons why novice writers overuse adverbs, and there are a lot of reasons why proficient writers don’t, but the main reason adverbs are rarely (I won’t say never, just rarely—and isn’t it funny that “rarely” is itself an adverb?) a good idea is exemplified in these new, sloppy sentences.

How quick is “quickly”? What does this adverb add that we wouldn’t have already assumed (aren’t trains usually driving quickly? And if you want to specify the speed, why not just offer the exact miles per hour?) The writer has included this adverb not because it adds anything to the text but because (most likely) he or she believes the sentence needs more words to read like the texts he or she studied in high school—you know, those canonical works, from back when writers got paid by the word. Those are the texts this writer believes he or she is meant to be emulating, not the ones that are actually, you know, GETTING PUBLISHED TODAY.

But enough ranting about bad writing. Let’s visit once more, shall we, the beauty of Haddon’s words? I’ll give you the sentences that come before and those that follow, and if you like them (and I know you will), I’ll remind you the book is called The Red House by Mark Haddon. Go read it for yourself. Following are the first six lines from the novel:

“Cooling towers and sewage farms. Finstock, Charlbury, Ascott-under-Wychwood. Seventy miles per hour, the train unzips the fields. Two gun-gray lines beside the river’s meander. Flashes of sun on the hammered metal. Something of steam about it, even now.”

BAM!

A Tale of Two Movies

Yes, this week’s post has a title. I couldn’t resist. Even though it’s a bit dorksy.

Anyway, as you can probably tell from the (dorksy) title, I want to talk this week about a couple of movies I watched recently, both based on novels I had read previously. The Hunger Games, as everyone not living in a cave probably knows, is the first in an insanely popular (and startlingly good) trilogy by Suzanne Collins. The film adaptation hit the theaters a few weeks ago. The Ruins by Scott Smith is probably the best horror novel I’ve ever read. The movie version was released in 2008, but I only just got around to watching it (I picked it up used for $3 worth of trade at my local music/movie store, Haffa’s. The price should give you an idea of how popular the movie was.)

Both screenplays were at least partially written by the original book authors. Suzanne Collins is credited with three other screenwriters for The Hunger Games, and Scott Smith is listed as the sole screenwriter of The Ruins. It’s no surprise, then, that both movies remain pretty true to their respective books (although in both, the screenwriters had to change some small details to fit the film format).

Watching movie versions of books I love in such short succession of each other really got me thinking about the differences between novels and movies, and the problems that arise when the former is adapted in to the latter. It’s true of most movies based on novels that if you ask just about anyone who read the book and watched the movie both, they’ll tell you the book was better. This is not snooty or pretentious or a means of bragging about having read the book (though sometimes it comes across that way).

The truth is, this reaction is almost universal because when these novels were written, they were written for the literary format. The characters, plot points, etc. were all structured with the knowledge that the reader would likely spend a few days working his or her way through the story. The pace is much slower. In a movie, you have to somehow tell a complete story, develop your characters, establish tension, and so on, and you have to do it all in a couple of hours. The pace feels ridiculously fast in comparison, so the same sort of scope you can work with in a novel simply will not work for a movie, in my opinion. You have to zoom in, narrow your focus. It’s a lot more like a short story.

Case in point, look at The Hunger Games (SPOILER ALERT!): Because the movie stays so faithful to the book, a lot of ground is covered in a very short period of time. In some cases, a feeling of knowing and really caring about the characters is sacrificed. In the book, Katniss and Rue are together for several pages. We spend enough time with Rue to really feel that we know her, and her death is so, so painful as a result. In the movie, Katniss meets Rue, really meets her for the first time, then in the next scene they separate. When they reunite, Rue dies. They spend I would guess not much more than five minutes of screen time together because almost immediately after they meet, Rue dies. There’s no time there to build any kind of a connection with Rue. The movie relies on viewers either A) having read the book, so they already know and love Rue, or B) caring about Rue’s death solely because Rue is young and adorable.

In the book of The Ruins, the majority of the book is really about these kids going stir-crazy, trapped together atop the mound. That doesn’t mean the vine isn’t a genuine threat or that it isn’t scary, but what’s really scary is watching the mental states of these kids get slowly more and more unstable, until it becomes clear that the real danger is the one they’re posing to themselves. The movie stays close enough to the book to maintain some of that, but it’s impossible to really recreate the psychological twists and turns the book takes when we’re not able to climb inside the characters’ heads.

Both movies were good movies, don’t get me wrong. The Ruins in particular really caught me by surprise, I suppose because I went into it with fairly low expectations (although I should point out that the ending to the movie version of The Ruins is lame—I’m not sure why Smith changed it—and as freaky as the vine is in the book, you just can’t make a plant scary in a movie. At times, in fact, it looks sort of silly). But yes, if you asked me, I’d tell you the books were better. Waaaaaay better.

As much as I’m a movie lover and an advocate for the value of short fiction, I do love to get lost in a novel. I love the scope of novels; I love to spend days getting to know the characters, so I can really, really care about the things that happen to them. From a technical perspective, I still think short stories make better use of the craft elements taught in MFA programs. But from an emotional perspective, the longer form is better suited to make the reader really engage with the characters and their plights. There’s something that absolutely cannot be replaced about spending a few days slowly consuming—and in the best cases, being consumed by—a really good novel.

Over the past week or so I read two very, very good books—Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby and Room by Emma Donoghue. Nick Hornby is one of my favorite writers—I’ve read all of his novels and loved every one. This was the second book I’ve read by Emma Donoghue, although I didn’t realize that until the end, when I was looking at the list of other books by her. It turns out she wrote one of my favorite short story collections of all time, Kissing the Witch, which reimagines classic fairy tales through a modern feminist perspective.

Both Juliet, Naked and Room were absolutely riveting, and Room is the best book I’ve read in a looooooong time. One thing that really struck me about both books was the fact that I was so engaged with the characters and plots that the writing itself just faded completely into the background—I hardly noticed it at all. This is not to say that the writing wasn’t good, on a language level. Both authors have an excellent grasp of voice, and we learn so much about the characters by the way they see and think about the world. Especially impressive is the writing in Room, which takes as its narrator a five-year-old boy who doesn’t understand very much about the world (think The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime but even younger and even more confused). Sounds like a difficult, maybe even impossible perspective to get in to, but Donoghue totally pulls it off. It is, in fact, the voice of the narrator that gives Room its emotional resonance. He’s so innocent, so young and sweet. He deserves better than this awful, awful world.

But it wasn’t really the beautiful, flawless sentences in both books that made them so impossible to put down, or at least, it was more than that. It was the combination of everything together: the stories themselves, the characters, and the perfect writing. I had to know what was going to happen next. Would Annie end up sleeping with Tucker? Would Jack and Ma escape Old Nick and leave Room forever behind? I’ve talked in the past about how novels often have their slow patches, and how usually, when I finish reading a novel, I feel as though it should have been significantly trimmed. Not so with either of these books. I was right there with the characters on every single page, and that’s the sort of thing that can only be accomplished by compelling plot and characters, not beautiful writing alone.

On the one hand, there was something mildly depressing about the books, as a writer. Because I could never be that good. Because I’m the sort of writer who gets by on lyrical prose; plot is the biggest thing I struggle with, and it probably always will be. Still, reading these books was a valuable reminder of why I became a writer to begin with. It wasn’t the old “I could do that too” mentality that writers sometimes talk about. I became a writer—I’m sure many of us did—because of books like these. Books so perfect I wouldn’t change a thing. Books I could never have written myself. Books that make the world a better place just by their mere existence.

A while ago, on an episode of Science Friday, Charlie Bamforth, author of Beer Is Proof God Loves Us: Reaching for the Soul of Beer and Brewing, said, “Some people say to me, ‘I don’t like beer.’ That’s nonsense. You just haven’t found the right beer for you yet.” This is the way I feel when someone—a student, usually, since I mostly only know academics and writers—tells me they don’t like reading. There are so many different types of books out there, so many different styles and topics and genres and techniques—I just don’t buy that there could be anyone alive who is mentally capable of reading but for whom there is simply no type of writing that would appeal.

But I think that the reason why so very many people don’t believe they like reading is a result of the sort of books that the average person has been exposed to. Consider this: the typical person, who comes from a non-reading family (by non-reading, I don’t mean illiterate, but a family where the parents don’t read for pleasure, and so neither do the kids) for the most part only has easy access to two types of books: canonical classics, which they’re forced to read (or are supposed to read anyway, though many of them just skim or SparksNotes them) in school, and whatever books are being published (and highly publicized) by the major New York publishing houses.

Let’s take the two types one at a time. First, we have the canonical classics. Good books, surely, but often dated. The language is rarely the sort of language we use today, and the writing style matches the style that was popular at the time. These narrators and characters don’t think or speak the way the contemporary reader does, and the plots and settings of these books often leave little to relate to from a modern perspective. Our society is a different society altogether. There are often underlying themes that are still relevant today, but the immediate themes and concerns of the books are usually so far off from what a modern reader—especially a modern young adult, the main group of people being forced to read these books—can relate to that the book, no matter how good it is, might seem tedious to someone who hasn’t yet built up an appreciation for reading.

Then we have what I’ll classify as popular literature, the stuff being put out and heavily marketed by the major publishers. This includes the bevvy of trendy memoirs that come out every year, the vast array of genre fiction that’s out there, and the stuff that bookstores usually classify as “general fiction” because the term “literary” probably seems too stuffy but there are no wizards or robots or ghosts or muscly men baring their chests on the front cover, so “general” seems the only word that really fits. There are examples of good, well written books in all of these popular categories, but the problem is, the good ones—the ones that are actually carefully crafted with attention to detail and language use, with unpredictable plots and multi-dimensional characters—are far, far fewer than the ones that seem to have been sloppily thrown together by some schmuck who doesn’t really know how to write.

You’ve probably read enough of those types of books in your time—I know I have. Those books that are so predictable and cliché, that use way too much exposition (exposition is so boring to read, don’t you think?) and don’t draw vivid enough images when describing scenes. The characters are one-dimensional; the story is bland; the writing is limp and lifeless on the page.

I got lucky at a young age. I got lucky because my parents read for pleasure, so I saw that reading for pleasure is a normal thing to do. Then, in middle school, I stumbled across The Catcher in the Rye, and I never looked back. But what about the people who don’t get lucky enough to find their Salinger, or whoever will really speak to them, amongst the mass of popular books that they have easy access to? Since there are far, far more crappy books on the bookstore and library shelves, the odds are that many people only ever pick up and have a go at the bad stuff. Having only ever read bad books and unrelatable canonical books, is it any wonder that so many people get it in their heads that they just don’t like reading, and, alas, give up?

If I had met Charlie Bamforth before having listened to his Science Friday interview, I would probably have told him, “I just don’t really like beer.” But the truth is, he’s probably right. There probably is a beer out there for me. I just haven’t had enough exposure to beer to have found it, and once I decided I didn’t like beer, I stopped trying it and closed the possibility of me ever finding the “right” one for me. The same thing is happening, I believe, to many people with reading.

I could argue that partially to blame are the major publishing houses, who keep putting out crap because they know it will sell (and please keep in mind that the fact that a book sells well does not mean that people are actually reading and enjoying it, as those of us who have mountains of books we’ve bought and haven’t yet gotten around to reading can attest to). I could say, too, that partially to blame are the teachers who only assign their students to read things their students are not likely to engage with, and partially to blame are the parents who don’t understand that just reading to your kids isn’t enough; you need to set the example and let them see that you enjoy reading for your own pleasure, too. But the whole truth is that this is not really a problem that can be fixed easily. Maybe it’s too late to fix it at all. Maybe TV and video games will always be so easy that most people will never take the time to search for books that they might enjoy reading. Who knows? All I can say is that I think it’s sad, and I wish more people could experience what I do when I get fully immersed in a really good book. I feel bad for them, feel like they’re missing out on something.

Is this how beer drinkers feel about me? Hmm.

In a recent Salon.com article, Laura Miller discusses the increasing importance of self-promotion for writers. Miller compares the current state of the literary world to times gone by, when authors like J.D. Salinger and Harper Lee (just to name a few of Miller’s examples) were able to have their writerly cake and eat it too, being both reclusive and successful at once. In the contemporary literary market, Miller points out, “someone like [Harper] Lee might as well not bother; however good her book is, it won't find an audience unless she's willing and able to make hawking it at least a part-time job.”

This is so true. So depressing and yet so true. As someone who has recently published my own first book, I have to admit that I’m a bit discouraged by how much of a published writer’s job is just getting out there and trying to sell his or her book. I have to admit that, while I’m still excited about having a book published, I’ve also found the entire experience anti-climactic in that writing the book, it seems, was just one small step in the being a published writer process. Now that the book is out there, I have to become a salesman, which is something I’m not particularly good at, nor is it something that I really want to do. I hate selling. I’m like Lloyd Dobler (from Say Anything) in that way: “I don’t want to buy anything, sell anything, or process anything as a career.”  

But unfortunately, it turns out that a good deal of a writer’s job is spent in PR and sales. I’m introverted and socially awkward—that’s why I got to be so good at writing to begin with. Instead of spending time outside, interacting with other kids my age, I stayed inside and wrote. At the time, of course, I wasn’t thinking about one day trying to publish the things I wrote, but if I had been, it surely wouldn’t have occurred to me that if I did publish them, I would have to then get out there and try to make those other kids, who I was afraid of to begin with and didn’t know how to talk to, like me enough to want to buy my book.

And what I find the most discouraging is not even that I have to get out there and push my wares, but the fact that even if I do, my book is still unlikely to reach a very wide audience. I can set up readings and book signings galore, but I’ll be lucky if very many people show up, never having heard of me, and even luckier if I actually sell more than a copy or two per event. It feels, sometimes, fairly futile. And all of the time and energy I put into those events take away, as Miller says, from the time I could spend writing.

So yes, I think the true state of the publishing world is a bit depressing. It’s depressing for the writers who will never reach much of an audience because they don’t know how to sell themselves, and it’s depressing for readers, who end up only hearing about a small fraction of the great stuff out there, and who, even then, are most likely to only hear about the writers who A) Spend more time marketing themselves than writing, and as a result are not great writers, or B) Have been deemed marketable enough by the gods that be at a major publishing house that the publisher is willing to spend time and money on promoting their book(s). While certainly the latter group includes some good writers, both groups, I’m afraid, include a lot of hacks and otherwise lousy writers. In other words, I don’t think it actually is that far-fetched to suggest that most of the really good writers aren’t even on the radars of most readers.

This all sounds like a rant, perhaps, or at least a whole lot of complaining. I don’t mean to complain. I’m a cynic, certainly, but I don’t see myself as a pessimist. I guess to some extent I think it’s interesting, as both a reader and writer, to be aware of how these things really work. I don’t know that there’s a solution to the problem. I suppose as readers, we have to be diligent about seeking out new work, and as writers, we have to be willing to put the time and effort in to selling a book or two here, a book or two there. But even then, there’s going to be a whole lot of great writers that I’ll never hear of as a reader, and there’s going to be a whole lot of potential readers that I’ll never reach as a writer. And I suppose that’s just the way it goes.

My husband, Damien, recently read The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, which I had read for my book club last summer and spent, no doubt, more time than I ought to have complaining about its many faults to Damien after I read it. It’s a very poorly crafted book, to say the least, and since it’s the only Dan Brown book I’ve ever read (and probably ever will read), I find it’s mere existence kind of grating since there are so many good writers out there who aren’t getting the attention that writers like Dan Brown receive.

Damien, though, is an unapologetic Dan Brown fan, so I was anxious to hear his thoughts on The Lost Symbol. Would he think it was a good book, I wondered? Were what I was calling its weaknesses really just subjective things that I personally didn’t like while another well educated writer/reader could see those things as strengths? Or was, perhaps, this book not a good example of Brown’s abilities? Damien has read most of Brown’s books, and while he’s always the first to admit that Brown seems to have some sort of template that he just plugs names, locations, and other details into for each new book, Damien also firmly believes that they are enjoyable books and worth reading because of their entertainment value.

It was interesting watching Damien make his way through The Lost Symbol. He did notice many of the same lousy writing issues that I had, and joked around with me about the crappy sentence level stuff, or the ridiculously amateurish repetition—characters in the book are constantly doing “a double take,” or their “gaze” finds something, and they “chuckle” a lot. Damien also felt like the plot was predictable and kept stopping to tell me, “I hope I’m wrong, but I think X is going to happen, and if X happens, I’m going to be very disappointed with Dan Brown.” Indeed, in almost every case, X did happen, and Damien was accordingly disappointed.

When Damien finished the book, I asked him what he thought overall. He of course first had to point out how long winded the ending was, and how a couple hundred pages should probably have been cut from the entire book (both points which I agree with), but then he said something that kind of surprised me—I honestly think it’s kind of a brilliant observation. He said, “There’s a difference between thinking a book is good and liking a book. The Lost Symbol,” he admitted, “is not a good book. But I liked it anyway.”

This point really resonated with me in part because while Damien was reading The Lost Symbol, I read a couple of small press novels I’d picked up at AWP. Both books had been good, in that they were well written and carefully crafted, and they explored interesting ideas in subtle and new ways. Yet, I have to admit, I didn’t like them. I found them interesting, and I felt like I gained something as a writer from having read them and analyzed the techniques they were using, but I didn’t enjoy them as a reader. I didn’t get sucked into the plots. I didn’t really care about the characters or feel invested in what might happen to them. So when Damien pointed out that there’s a difference between liking a book and thinking it’s a good book, I had to agree.

This is an interesting realization as a writer. I suppose I would have assumed that these two things should go hand-in-hand—and certainly, sometimes they do, but not always. I think for many readers, maybe even most, what makes a book pleasurable to read is a very different set of things than what makes it a worthwhile piece of literature. It’s the same, I think, for most types of art. What makes a painting artistically worthwhile is a different set of criteria than what makes the average Joe want to hang a print of it on his or her wall—consider how commercially successful Thomas Kincade is, in spite of the fact that educated artsie types think he’s a hack. Thomas Kincade probably is a hack, but his paintings are still pretty, don’t you think? Dan Brown is a hack, too, but man, wasn’t that chapter that takes place in the pitch black pod intense?

I can’t picture anybody in their right mind (to be fair, I should say I can’t picture anybody who is very well educated about literature) considering Dan Brown a “good” writer, but I can and do understand people “liking” him. Damien’s right, the two attitudes are not the same, and even snooty types like me, who cringed my way through most of The Lost Symbol, can still recognize the value in a good mystery, a little adventure, just something to distract you from the real world for a while.

Last week, I read Stephen King’s newest book, Full Dark, No Stars. Those of you who know much about me know that I’m a hopeless Stephen King fan. Stephen King (along with J. D. Salinger—I read The Catcher in the Rye in middle school and I still remember thinking, “Oh, I didn’t know authors were allowed to write the way people actually talk!”) is one of the authors who really got me into reading when I was young. I checked out The Bachman Books from the library when I was a kid—it was probably the first book I ever checked out from the adult section—and I’ve been an avid fan ever since.

This is in spite of the fact that, the older I got and the more I studied literature and writing (a B.A. in English followed by an MFA in creative writing, and several publications and a published book behind me now), the more I began to understand why so many literary types—you know, not the average reading public, but the people with advanced English degrees and subscriptions to literary journals and Poets and Writers—consider Stephen King sort of a hack. I don’t think he’s a hack, mind you . . . but I understand why other people do.

He has published a lot of crap. For every one really good Stephen King book or story, there’s at least one that you wonder how it could have possibly been deemed publishable by the editors. Full Dark, No Stars, then, was kind of a gamble. Overall, I ended up really enjoying the book, with the definite exception of the horrible story, “Fair Extension,” which is so unoriginal and boring I feel almost irritated that the publisher wasted my time by allowing it to be in the book. Without it, the book would have been much better, and they could also, then, have called it a collection of novellas, since every story except that one is of novella length.

The three novellas, however, were pretty good. The first one, “1922,” was by far my least favorite of the novellas, but it definitely felt worth reading. “Big Driver” was my second favorite; it had me engaged enough throughout the story that I was willing to overlook the phoned-in, incredibly contrived, and poorly paced ending. But the final novella in the book, “A Good Marriage,” I really, really enjoyed. More on that in a minute.

In the Afterword—King’s obligatory note to the “Constant Reader”—King discusses, briefly, the difference between genre fiction and literary fiction, as he sees it (although he refers to genre fiction as “story-fiction,” an interesting shift in emphasis, I think). “I have no quarrel with literary fiction,” King says, “which usually concerns itself with extraordinary people in ordinary situations, but as both a reader and a writer, I’m much more interested by ordinary people in extraordinary situations.”

I don’t agree at all with King’s definition of literary fiction. In fact, I would argue that most genre fiction is about extraordinary people in extraordinary situations, while most literary fiction is about ordinary people in ordinary situations, although literary fiction has certainly been known to put ordinary people in extraordinary situations. What good literary fiction doesn’t do, in my opinion, is deal with unrealistic characters. King’s view of his own work, though—that he’s focusing on ordinary people, putting them into unusual situations, and then letting them react as real people would—does seem a fair assessment of what the better of his pieces are doing, although I believe that’s what separates Stephen King from other genre writers. Much of King’s work, I would argue, is actually literary fiction. Dark literary fiction, but literary fiction, nonetheless.

My favorite piece in Full Dark, No Stars is a good example of this. I would certainly not classify “A Good Marriage” as genre fiction, even though there are some very horror-like elements to it. But this story, at its core, is about a character, an ordinary woman who discovers a very dark secret about her husband, and is struggling with what to do about this new knowledge. The novella is not driven by events, but by the slow unfurling of her daily life following the discovery, as she battles with both her husband’s and her own inner demons. Seems pretty literary to me.

“A Good Marriage” actually reminded me of David Crouse’s literary fiction story, “Torture Me,” which is the final story in his award winning collection The Man Back There. Both stories deal with ordinary characters dealing with the same sort of “extraordinary situation”: a happily married man who is haunted by his own sadistic sexual desires, and who has been keeping those desires a secret from his wife. In “Torture Me,” the main character is the man himself, putting the readers uncomfortably close to understanding a person we would always have told ourselves we could never understand. In “A Good Marriage,” the main character is the wife, who discovers the secret and doesn’t really know, anymore, how to feel about the man she’s been married to and loved for twenty-seven years.

Now certainly, in “A Good Marriage,” the husband’s secret is far more grim and extreme than the main character’s secret in “Torture Me.” “Torture Me” could arguably fall into the category of ordinary people in ordinary situations; whereas “A Good Marriage” definitely does fall under the “ordinary people in extraordinary situations” umbrella, like King says. Still, I would probably group both in that same second category, and I would say that, while in “Torture Me,” we’re close to the husband and in “A Good Marriage,” we’re close to the wife, both stories are about character. Both stories focus not on events and extraordinary plot points, but on believable characters who are struggling in very believable ways with their believable lives.

Which is what makes both pieces literary fiction, as far as I’m concerned. My definition of literary fiction goes something like this: Literary fiction focuses on character. The characters have to feel real, and they have to react to their circumstances the way they would if these things actually happened; the plot, although it should be present and it should be compelling, is of secondary importance. In genre fiction, I believe, plot is more important than character, and when you make plot more important than character, the result is often that the characters are forced to follow along with the plot. The story ends up feeling contrived, and the characters’ actions feel phony.

Stephen King does write some genre fiction—those pieces that I think aren’t any good—but “A Good Marriage,” and many of his other stories and books, I would say, are character, not plot, based, and therefore should be classified as literary fiction (whether King likes it or not). And for the record, Full Dark, No Stars is worth a read, even if only for “A Good Marriage.”

I’ve got, once again, those agent hunting blues. For the past few of years, I’ve been on-again-off-again looking for an agent for one of two books: the novel that I wrote as my MFA thesis (and have revised to the point where it’s barely recognizable as the same story now), and a children’s book I’d been working on for several years. After I signed my first book contract—for a short story collection, which I would have never bothered trying to find an agent for—I thought my chances of being taken seriously by an agent might dramatically increase, so I worked through another thorough revision of my novel (my children’s book is, at the moment, floundering, unsubmitted, in a file on my computer) and sent out a new set of queries.

On two separate occasions since then, within days of my having sent the query, an agent requested to read the manuscript. I thought that was pretty encouraging. I’ve had a handful of manuscript requests since I’ve been trying to find an agent, and they usually do come within days of the agent having received the query (my theory is that if an agent is interested, they’ll usually let you know right away; if you don’t hear anything for several weeks, it’s pretty safe to assume that when you do, it will be a rejection, but there are always exceptions), but still, I chose to see this is as a sign that perhaps having a book already published was going to help me finally land an agent.

But in both cases, the result was exactly the same as it has been in the past: an encouraging, brief response, letting me know that I’m a good writer and this is a good book, but the agent in question just didn’t fall in love with it. I should keep sending it around, though, as another agent might feel differently. This is always what they say. I’d heard, once upon a time, that when an agent actually reads your manuscript, even if they reject it, you’ll still benefit, because they’ll tell you why they rejected it, and you can use that feedback to revise further. “You’re a good writer and this is a good book, I just didn’t fall in love with it,” though, doesn’t give me much to go on for another revision, unfortunately.

Because they all suggest I should keep trying with other agents, I would probably assume that there is nothing inherently wrong with the book if it wasn’t for the fact that several agents have requested the manuscript and come to the same conclusion. I have to think that I need to read a bit more closely into this abstract idea of “falling in love” with a book. They all agree that the book is well-crafted, but nothing about it is pushing them over the edge, into love.

I can’t help but wonder if, in all my attention to craft and technique, I’ve inadvertently revised out the visceral core of my book (I hate the word visceral—so pretentious—but I think it’s the only word that really fits in this context so I have to use it just this one time). Early drafts of my novel, which were, admittedly, terrible, had a sort of emotional foundation that I think the current draft lacks. Those early drafts were written early on in my MFA studies, and the way this book evolved links noticeably with my progress through my MFA program.

The thing is, MFA programs are inherently peopled with intellectuals. These programs are part of academia, and in order to get in you have to have earned a bachelor’s degree with a high GPA; you have to have strong letters of recommendation from previous instructors; etc. Yes, you also have to have a strong writing sample, and most programs say that the writing sample is far more important than anything else. But the other things do matter, and it is true that the people who end up in an MFA program are, whether they see themselves that way or not, intellectuals. 

I wrote the first, more emotionally driven draft of my novel my first summer as an MFA student. Then I spent the next few years revising it, focusing on craft over emotion. I don’t know that I consciously tried to make the story less, I guess I should say sentimental, since that’s the word the MFA community would use, but I definitely did try to rework the story going on certain assumptions, like that it isn’t inherently sad that the main character has been stifled by his parents' overbearing values. Nothing, from an intellectual standpoint, is inherently sad. In the MFA world, there is something of a consensus (and I think it’s a good one) that good writers don’t tug on their readers' heart strings. Good writers get their readers to care about what is going on in a story by the writing and the well-roundedness of the characters.

So I rewrote and rewrote and rewrote the novel, focusing on logic and the specific dynamics of this specific family and trying to make the characters as well-rounded and complex as possible. I think all the characters now are very believable, and the events that occur throughout the story feel right, but still, the emotional reaction I had when I first came up with the idea is gone. And based on the responses I’ve been getting from agents, I can tell that the story isn’t reaching other people on that gut level, either. I think if you read a book and think it is good, that means the book is well crafted, but in order for you to “fall in love” with a book, there has to be something more.

So I’m sort of at an impasse. I like the way this particular novel has turned out. I like that it’s intellectually rather than emotionally driven. And I’ve been working on it for about five years now and am ready to move on with my life, to be honest. It’s a good book, like all the agents who have read it have said. It’s just not the kind of book that anyone is going to fall in love with. I can accept that, even if it means it will never get published (although I’m not giving up yet—there are still small presses out there). But this issue of inciting an emotional reaction from the reader is something worth thinking about for the next book I write. Perhaps I’m pretty good at craft, but I still have something to learn about engaging my reader on a gut level, and I do know that it’s possible to do both. My favorite writers (Rick Moody, for example) very successfully engage readers on both an intellectual and emotional level. I’m definitely not there yet. But at least I know, now, what I should be working on.

Some friends and I started a (somewhat half-assed) book club several months ago, and we’ve ended up mostly reading books that can really only be categorized under the larger umbrella of popular fiction: Stieg Larsson, Dan Brown—the sort of books that are being published by the major New York presses and that are getting read by millions and millions of readers.

While we have enjoyed some aspects of these books—usually aspects related to plot—we quickly learned that when a group of people with various levels of advanced English degrees (BA, MFA, and even a current PhD student) pick apart and analyze these sorts of popular books, the flaws in the writing seem to far outweigh any enjoyable aspects of the stories. The discussions are interesting, and we definitely disagree on what parts of the books we like and what parts we don’t, but the general consensus is usually the same: these are not well written pieces of literature. 

It’s been kind of bittersweet to read these popular fiction books and find myself constantly getting caught up in how poorly crafted they are. It isn’t that none of these books have the potential to be good literature, but they almost all seem noticeably under-revised. They read like first or second drafts, written by decent authors who are surely capable of turning these books into something much better but who have signed a however-many book contract and need to just call this book done so they can move on to the next one.

In a way, it’s sad to realize that there once was a version of myself who wouldn’t have noticed these things that I notice now, but that version of myself is gone. Studying craft and literature for many years in advanced courses seems to have killed my ability to just enjoy a crappy piece of escapist literature; I’m too busy focusing on how contrived the plot is, how one-dimensional the characters, how bland the narration.

But I guess that my ability to enjoy those sorts of books has been replaced with the ability to enjoy a different sort of book, which I really couldn’t have enjoyed before studying English as an undergrad and then grad student. A lot of the stuff that I love now would have just been too subtle for the me who might have been able to appreciate, say, Dan Brown. That me wouldn’t have had the patience or the know-how to read closely between the lines and pick up on the subtle nuances buried beneath each carefully chosen word. That me would have found the stuff I read today boring, pointless, with no discernable plot. “Yeah, it’s very realistic,” I would have said, “but real life is boring. Who wants to read about that?”

So I guess, while some part of me does mourn the loss of the ability to enjoy reading the Dan Brown style of fiction, I celebrate the ability to revel, instead, in the sort of fiction that does more than just pass the time. Yes, it takes more focus; I can’t just zone out to it. But I get something more out of it, and the experience is far more satisfying. But that’s certainly not to say there’s not value in the other kind of fiction, too. Now that I’ve had my first taste of Dan Brown, I can’t picture myself ever voluntarily reading another book by him, but I’m still able to enjoy some of that popular stuff. I still like, for example, Stephen King (even though I no longer am able to read a Stephen King book without forming a list of complaints in my head). Reading the less carefully crafted stuff can be its own kind of fun, and sometimes I think it would be nice to be able to do so without feeling the need to workshop every single novel in my head.