Another special quarantine edition! In this action-packed episode, Jacke talks to Robyn Speed and Tatiana Santos of the African Library Project (africanlibraryproject.org), an organization that has helped create or improve more than three thousand libraries in Africa. He then turns to the great Italo Calvino and his short story masterpiece, “The Distance of the Moon” (1965), which melds together a stunning vision of the cosmos with a poignant and highly original love story.
Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC. Or send an email to jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com.
Music Credits:
“Glitter Blast,” “Bushwick Tarantella,” and “Into the Wormhole” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
The Great Novella Tournament of Champions celebrates a classic literary form believed to be poised for a comeback. The judge is a long-time fan of the form who is in the final stages of self-publishing a novella of his own.
Off we go! First up in our celebrity novella deathmatch are a couple of heavyweights from the Dead White Male division:
Billy Budd by Herman Melville
vs.
The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad
Batten the hatches! Beat to quarters! “Shall we start the contest, Cap’n?” “Make it so, sir, make it so!”
Let’s get started.
Pre-Game Chatter
This is a strong matchup between two undeniably great authors with many similarities. Both are more famous for other works – in fact, they each have novellas that are seeded higher in the Tournament of Champions (Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness). Although Melville belongs to the nineteenth-century and Conrad seems firmly grounded in the twentieth, the two contestants are actually closer in era than one might think. The Secret Sharer was written only twenty years after Billy Budd. It was also the first to be published, in 1912. (Billy Budd languished in some drawer until 1924.)
Billy Budd comes in as the favorite: it routinely makes lists of top novellas. If this burb is to be believed, The Secret Sharer has apparently been called “among the finest of Conrad’s short novels, and among the half-dozen greatest short novels in the English language” by a Stanford professor I’ve never heard of, but this seems like a ridiculous quote, as it suggests that Conrad by himself has three or four of the top six novellas of all time.
Billy Budd
Image Credit: davidjdrysdale.com “A common sailor, so intensely black that he must needs have been a native African of the unadulterate blood of Ham…” Ummm…
Word Count: 30,326
Author credibility: +10 points
Come on! It’s Herman Melville! It’s hard to get bigger than that. This guy swings for the fences! Billy Budd is often viewed as a good “get a Melville fix without loading yourself down with you-know-what.” Oddly, I found Moby Dick to be a faster read.
Inferior work penalty: -5 points
Calm down. It’s Melville, but it’s not Moby-Dick or Bartleby. Should be no higher than third on your Melville list.
The Sea, the Sea!: +3 points
Stories taking place on wooden ships earn 3 bonus points. Years ago anything taking place on the sea was a big negative for me. After reading Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series I’m into it now. I’m a big fan of the sea!
Author lifetime obscurity points: +2 points
Wrote Moby Dick at age 32; died 40 years later in obscurity, with his classic novel never having sold out its initial print run of 3,000 copies. That’s worth a couple of points from Jacke. RIP big fella.
First page what the huh? moments: -5 points.
Even putting the racial stereotypes in the context of their era, it’s tough to keep going when such outdated physical descriptions hit you all at once, right at the start. Billy Budd is characterized by his flashing white teeth, his “barbaric good humor,” and compared with a “grand sculptured Bull.” Ugh. Luckily things do get better…
Clotted prose: -25 points.
…but not for a while! I admire Melville, but good lord is this novella a slog. I had to run at this so many times I felt like Martin Short as the soldier who had never learned how to climb stairs. A taste:
Noting this uncomplaining acquiescence, all but cheerful one might say, the shipmates turned a surprised glance of silent reproach at the sailor. The Shipmaster was one of those worthy mortals found in every vocation, even the humbler ones–the sort of person whom everybody agrees in calling “a respectable man.” And–nor so strange to report as it may appear to be–though a ploughman of the troubled waters, life-long contending with the intractable elements, there was nothing this honest soul at heart loved better than simple peace and quiet. For the rest, he was fifty or thereabouts, a little inclined to corpulence, a prepossessing face, unwhiskered, and of an agreeable color–a rather full face, humanely intelligent in expression. On a fair day with a fair wind and all going well, a certain musical chime in his voice seemed to be the veritable unobstructed outcome of the innermost man. He had much prudence, much conscientiousness, and there were occasions when these virtues were the cause of overmuch disquietude in him. On a passage, so long as his craft was in any proximity to land, no sleep for Captain Graveling. He took to heart those serious responsibilities not so heavily borne by some shipmasters.
That is some serious overwriting. Paragraph after paragraph. Page after page. Looking for the narrative in all this prose made me feel like a confused dog digging up the whole yard. Why was I digging up the yard? Because my master hid my bone because he is cruel and hates me.
Ability to go deep: +35 points
A whopping score for this category. But there’s no getting around it – once you get through the agonizingly dull prose, you are rewarded with some very rich themes. With a fairly simple story and a limited set of characters, Melville nevertheless manages to unlock some seriously compelling issues. The law, society, submission to authority, psychology, the death penalty, discipline and punishment, the meaning of justice, homoerotic behavior and how it manifests itself among sailors – it’s all here. The rules of the sea – so necessary to maintain order and preserve safety – require you to execute a man you believe in your heart is innocent. How do you live with yourself after that? And yet it must be done. Eeeyah, we still haven’t figured these issues out.
“God Bless Captain Vere!”: +10 points
Billy Budd’s plaintive wail at the end. More than a shade of “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.” Sure, it’s buried in the overstuffed graveyard that is Melville’s prose, but even so: heartbreaking.
“Billy Budd, Billy Budd”: +10 points
The captain’s dying words. A cliche? I don’t care, I’m a total sucker for this. An entire life lived… and nothing else weighed on him more.
The concluding poem “Billy in the Darbies”: +0.5 points
This poem is… um… heartfelt. Oh, Herman. You deserved so much better. Life failed you.
Billy Budd Total: 35.5 points
Ah, here we go…
Image Credit: brainpickings.org
The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad
Word Count: 16,667
After the agony of reading Billy Budd, I was expecting the worst. Isn’t Conrad also verbose? Painfully slow? Obtuse? No! I had misremembered this, or at least The Secret Sharer does not suffer from it. Or is this because of my Aubrey-Maturin training? Whatever the reason, reading Conrad after Melville is like reading Hemingway after Faulkner. Therefore…
Readability: +20
A strong start for Conrad, who famously wrote in English despite being a native Polish speaker. He deserves the points – this tale zips along and drives hard toward its conclusion. A novella at its best.
Author bonus points: +10
Joseph Conrad! An all-time great. Some people were born to write. He is one.
Inferior work penalty: -4
Not Heart of Darkness or Lord Jim. Tough standards to live up to, but there you have it.
The Sea, the Sea!: +3
Eh, might as well follow through with this to be fair.
Conrad the unfathomable: +2
One of my all-time favorite literary stories: Ford Madox Ford claimed that Conrad used to come over to his house and the two of them would look into one another’s eyes for hours, going deep into each other’s soul. That is very Conrad. Only Conrad could earn a point for…
“The place was literally not big enough to swing a cat in.”: +1
A cliche that’s not a cliche, you see, because he means it literally. Except that the narrator was not holding a cat. Literal has its limits. The point is that Conrad’s unyielding seriousness, coupled with his desperate lion-tamer’s relationship to language, always make me smile.
Unbelievably good title: +5
I did not realize until reading this novella, which is about a captain “sharing” his quarters with a shadowy figure he conceals from the crew, that Conrad invented the phrase (I think). I knew of the title, of course, but I’ve been using “secret sharer” as a synonym for doppelganger for years without knowing it was something Conrad had originated.
Ambition: +5
There are some interesting themes here – mostly about the growth of a captain during his first command. His attempts to assert his authority over his crew – and the effects of this on his mind – are compelling. The shaky, shifting narration is a nice literary touch.
Ambition, absence of: -15
Even so, the themes here are a little simple for Conrad, who would go far deeper with Heart of Darkness. Billy Budd is more ambitious. Put it this way: had this been all Conrad had written about, I doubt Ford Madox Ford would have looked into his eyes for more than 45 minutes, tops.
Orson Welles bonus points: +3
Orson Welles liked Melville, but he loved Conrad. The three points are for the recording of Orson Welles reading The Secret Sharer. Perfect marriage of voice and story.
Orson Welles “Come on, Internet!” penalty: -1
I spent ten minutes clicking links trying to get to this audio recording. Gone, gone, gone. Finally I gave up. Don’t email me a working link. The recording is dead to me.
Opening sequence “Hey, this will work!” passage: +5
Here’s Conrad setting the table:
“All these people had been together for eighteen months or so, and my position was that of the only stranger on board. I mention this because it has some bearing on what is to follow. But what I felt most was my being a stranger to the ship; and if all the truth must be told, I was somewhat of a stranger to myself.”
Awesome. That table would have taken Melville at least 700 words to set. In the time it would have taken him to set out the plates and silverware and glasses and candles and tea cozies and napkin holders, Conrad would have wolfed down five chops and would be picking his teeth as Ford Madox Ford tried to stare into his eyes.
Narrator’s queasy relationship with his crew and his own authority, economically rendered: +5
Before I could collect myself the words “Come in” were out of my mouth, and the steward entered with a tray, bringing in my morning coffee. I had slept, after all, and I was so frightened that I shouted, “This way! I am here, steward,” as though he had been miles away. He put down the tray on the table next the couch and only then said, very quietly, “I can see you are here, sir.”
Fantastic.
Narrator’s blurry sense of self: +5
Too many great passages here to quote. And the novella doesn’t go on too long. No Krusty and The Big Ears problems here.
Suspense!: +1
Point for the scene where the visiting captain notes he only had to pull a couple of miles to get from one ship to the other, suggesting that the Secret Sharer could have swum the distance (as he had). I gasped. Not literally though. Oh, and I swung a cat. Also not literally.
Genuine suspense!: +2
Billy Budd felt like homework. The Secret Sharer was an under-the-covers-with-the-flashlight pleasure – I literally wanted to know what happened. Excellent for a novella, even if it doesn’t have the deep themes of Billy Budd.
The Secret Sharer (total points): 47
Billy Budd (total points): 35.5
Winner: The Secret Sharer
Have a different score on your card? Or an idea for a novella that belongs in the Tournament? Let Jacke know in the comments. And check this space for Jacke’s novellas, which are on their way!
I’m sure there’s a lot of good advice in the business plan, which I haven’t read yet. I will be interested to see how much of it applies to literary fiction, which comes with its own set of marketing challenges.
One of the interesting parts of the interviews came when she described her early efforts submitting her work to agents. Several of them liked her book but didn’t think they could sell it because the “paranormal trend” was on the decline.
Huh??? Wha???
Photo Credit: Universal Pictures
Hasn’t Steven King been writing paranormal books for forty years? Year after year, book after book – if he and his many counterparts haven’t saturated the market, then who’s to say the market could ever be saturated? How many agents and publishers say, “Eh, there’s no market anymore for [westerns, stories set in outer space, literary erotica, vampire books, Scandinavian mysteries]” and then along comes a writer with a great book that destroys the conventional wisdom.
Luckily, Swank and her readers were able to find one another, in spite of the so-called experts in six-month “trends.”
A quick summation: yes, there is a difference between genre fiction
and literary fiction; no, genre fiction is not necessarily ‘lower’
than literary fiction or mere escapism; yes, literary fiction has just
as many cliches and tropes as genre fiction; and yes, there are many
examples of top quality work and utter crap in both categories, and
people shouldn’t pigeon-hole their reading habits to solely one or the
other.
As Campbell recognizes, the issue is not about defining literary fiction or pitting it against genre fiction (sinkhole arguments which unfortunately bog down a lot of these discussions). Most literary fiction authors I know don’t really view their fiction as better or more purposeful than other types of fiction. They recognize the value of genres and like reading them. They didn’t set out to write “literary fiction” per se, they just set out to write a story that wasn’t in a genre. No detectives, no cowboys, no zombies, no mummies, nothing set in the future, no characters who can read minds, no gun play, no car chases… if you create a long enough list you realize you’re left without a clear genre home. and yet we know that people do write and read books without any of those things. The category of “literary fiction” fills that gap.
As Campbell identifies, the main problem for a book that doesn’t fit well in any category other than “literary fiction,” is that it’s hard to find its audience:
whereas it’s fairly straight-forward to tell someone your book is
fantasy or sci-fi or erotica and give them a pretty good idea of what
to expect, describing it as ‘literary fiction’ does absolutely nothing
for you, and so makes it much more difficult to market.
This is particularly true for indie publishers, who can’t count on marketing campaigns or the imprimatur of a traditional publisher. (Note: there are an awful lot of traditionally published midlist authors who don’t get much marketing support these days either.)
Campbell has landed on a couple of solutions. 1) Build an author brand, and 2) go to the readers rather than expect them to find you.
One approach may be starting up a blog like this one, which focuses on issues of self-publishing and literary fiction. I’m not
convinced, however, that marketing to fellow writers is the best way to go.
Other ideas for finding readers: focus on groups of people who share common interests with your characters. Is your protagonist a dog lover? A fisherman? Racecar driver? Ethnographer? Latin expert? There may be online forums with potential readers. You don’t want to jump in with a spam post demanding people buy your book, but participating in
the forum – demonstrating some expertise and enthusiasm that people care about – may lead others toward giving your book a try.
I’ll post some other ideas in future posts – and Campbell has promised to update his Facebook page with news of his efforts, which will be worth tracking as well.
So the author writes a 30,000-word story and finds himself in literary limbo. Even though he’s achieved some success with his previous books, magazines aren’t willing to publish a story this long. They only have so many pages, after all, and adding extra paper will be expensive to print and ship. For traditional book publishing it’s too short. Asking readers to pay hardcover prices for such a slim novel does not seem viable.
What can he do? The story is what it is. It’s the length it needs to be. The author doesn’t want his readers to get a version that’s been chopped down or padded out. The other alternative is to leave it in the drawer. The readers get nothing.
Fortunately the author has access to a new publishing and distribution model that will enable him to sell the book for the more reasonable price of $6.95. It’s a model more typically used by genre fiction (sci fi, fantasy, mysteries) but the author has no qualms about that. Who cares if it’s not the exact means preferred by the typical dispensers of literary fiction? Readers – and the integrity of the work, if you want to be high-minded about it – should come first! Besides, what’s a little stigma? He’s built his brand. He’s successful enough to welcome a little danger.
Who is this brave author, blazing trails on the publishing frontier? Jonathan Franzen, waking up and embracing changes to publishing in 2013? Scott Turow, finally recognizing that an author owes allegiance to readers and not established business models?
After thirty years of living like this, it’s really hard to understand that the first three weeks of an indie-published book mean nothing more than three weeks five years after the book’s initial publication. Every week is the same. I still struggle with that mindset. It’s hard to undo years and years of training.
There are some great business-savvy authors out there, including those who transitioned from successful traditional careers to indie publishing or have found a blend to be the best option. But there’s no getting around it: most of them have come from non-fiction writing or genre fiction. Casting oneself as an entrepreneur of literary fiction has its own set of challenges, which I’ll be writing about later. In the meantime, let me say that I’m thankful for good advice no matter where it comes from.
A side note: I tried to find a picture of Kristine to add to this post. Not sure if this is actually her (the Internet says it is, but who knows if that’s right?), but if it is, am I the only one who think she looks like Betsy Brandt from Breaking Bad?
Jacke Wilson 