Novelists – Don’t Show Your Hand

Years ago I went to hear a singer-songwriter whose songs were darkly eccentric and her stage presence full of mystery.

If she had sung her songs without comment, I would have been the first to worship at her temple. But instead she explained how each song came about, sometimes AFTER singing it, with a few remarks, in monotone, about its source–an item in the New York Times, a phrase her grandma used to use, a cute remark by her toddler, etc. She had a great talent, but undercut it with trivial patter, shrinking her songs down to the level of everyday banality.

Is there advice here for the novelist? Yes: Keep your sources, whatever they are, outside the boundaries of your dust jacket.

In fiction, it’s the illusion that counts. Your reader hasn’t come to you for news about YOUR life (harsh, but true), nor for revelations about the everyday details of your creative process, your research, or your overarching intention. They want to luxuriate inside the bubble of a good story. And they don’t want anything to pop that bubble.

Magic is no fun if you know how every trick is done.

Kurt Vonnegut was a total believer that every element–title, dedication, preface, chapter headings, everything–should be part of furthering the illusion. Mother Night, for example, is a novel about a WWII double agent facing execution. It is dedicated to “Mata Hari.”

For David Guterson, the principle doesn’t seem so crucial. In Snow Falling on Cedars, a WWII-era California Anglo boy and his Japanese-American girlfriend are wrenched apart by the the ruthless concentration-camp internment of her and her family. I loved this book. I finished it thanking Guterson for the experience it gave me.

Then I read his afterword, a thank-you to the archive where he got his story material, and the bubble popped. Now it was history.

(Nothing wrong with history. But that’s not what I come to a novel for.)

Mind you, I’m not saying you have to be an ingrate. Guterson was right to credit the archive–I’m just saying, think twice before you put it BETWEEN THE COVERS OF YOUR NOVEL.