My new home
Dear All,
Yes, I’ve been updating this blog not-at-all, so this post is like closing the gate after the horse has gone off, yes, but still: I now post regularly, along with my fellow Upstart Crow Literary agents, on our company blog. If you are at all interested in hearing what I’ve got to say, that is the place to go.
Thanks for reading As the World Stearns, and I’ll see you in my new home!
M.
Why I Read: ABDCE
If you read enough behind-the-scenes writing by famous authors, you’re probably over-familiar with the “Why I Write” essay. Sometimes these are pretty damn inspirational (I’m thinking of Paul Auster’s pieces collected in The Red Notebook), and other times a wee bit indulgent and hateful (probably best not to name names, sorry). But it is all too rare to come across an essay about why we read.
For me, it has always been about What Happens Next, about storytelling at its most fundamental, that breathless and then, and then, and then. It can be easy to forget that, sometimes—I become enamored with a writer’s wit or pyrotechnics or form-bending exercises, and I spend ages hacking through wildernesses of metafiction, giving my brain a workout on playgrounds devised by genius loons. (I’m thinking, of course, of the usual suspects: Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace, Jeanette Winterson, Paul Auster—really, this shelf is endless, and endlessly fascinating.) Or I meander slowly through finely wrought character studies, in books that are about the nuances of personality and make high drama out of small moments. Whatever—these are all good, worthy books.
But while in the midst of them, I sometimes forget about the visceral joys of plain old story. Until I stumble upon it again and recall, Oh yeah! This is what it’s all about.
Which brings me to The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. I began reading this the other day, and it’s a struggle to pull myself away from it. Yes, it is wordy and long and taxes my vocabulary, but good God! It moves like it’s on speed. Things happen, pretty much from the first few pages. Our naif hero d’Artagnan takes offense and challenges a stranger to a duel; the stranger can’t be bothered because of a mysterious plot he’s involved in with the beautiful Milady; d’Artagnan suffers a theft of the thing he most prizes in the world. And that’s all in the first chapter. I don’t know where it’s going, but I can’t wait to get there.
Dumas keeps the reader on a need-to-know-basis, telling us no less than but no more than we need at any particular point in the story, filling us in as things develop. He perfectly illustrates the tried-and-true reliable story mnemonic ABDCE—Action, Background, Development, Climax, Ending. That formula is usually used to discuss the short story, but it applies just as much to the novel, and to sections within novels: engage readers with action, parcel out just enough background to pique our interest, escalate to some sort of breaking point, get out.
We can all learn a thing or two from that kind of story. Speaking of which, I’m going to get back to it.
Slumdog Counterfeiter
It seems a foregone conclusion that Slumdog Millionaire will win Best Picture at the Academy Awards tonight. Well, okay. I haven’t even bothered to see all of the competition, but Boyle’s movie was certainly the liveliest, most consistently entertaining of the nominated films I have seen. Not as moving, complex, and real as Milk, no, but …it is fun here and there. It does have that going for it. And yet I hope it doesn’t win much of anything.
Don’t get me wrong. I like overheated melodrama. I love dancing on train platforms. I am even fond of completely outlandish story structures like the Q&A one at the heart of this movie. I like me my crazy storylines in service of a good time. But there is so much that is deeply wrong with Slumdog Millionaire that I can’t let go and enjoy the frippery of the story. That it has been embraced so feverishly by so many Westerners I find deeply suspect, because no way no how not in a million years would this story fly with US audiences if it had been set in, say, New York. Read the rest of this entry »
These people are brilliant.
They’re called Improv Everywhere, and they stage public events in large cities. Their next project is the Eighth Annual No Pants Subway Ride on January 10. Can’t wait.
Seriously, old man, I’m not that old …
but I do love the old-time radio shows. They take virtually no space on my iPod, and most are the length of a subway ride. And some—especially Orson Welles’s The Adventures of Harry Lime—are tiny wonders of economy, drama, and art. Some clever folks have put most of the Mercury Theatre’s recordings on the web here. (The Mercury Theatre was infamous for its dramatization of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, of course.)
Well worth checking out.
In Conversation 3
[Background: Sitting in a hotel bar in Vegas, waiting for someone, reading my Diana Wynne Jones novel and, when the person next to me strikes up a conversation, blathering happily about what I do, and the book, and reveling in my dorkiness. I am so naive! I'd forgotten that Las Vegas is notorious for more than just gambling.]
M: So that’s what I do. What about you? What do you do?
Q: Whatever I want. (pauses significantly) You know what I do.
(silence while Stearns processes)
M: (blushing, no doubt) Well, I do now.
Q: So, what do you say?
M: Erm, you know, I don’t usually have to … pay for that sort of thing.
Q: Really!?
M: Hey! Be nice!
(Q mutters, goes off in search of other prey.)
In Conversation 2
Q: So you work in children’s books? Any books I might have heard of?
M: (uncomfortable shifting) Well, do you have children?
Q: No.
M: Are you, like, married to a children’s librarian?
Q: Um, no.
M: Do you maybe read children’s books for fun?
Q: No.
M: Well, okay then. Nothing you would have heard of.
In Conversation 1
Q: So where are you from?
M: Eh, New York, by way of California.
Q: Oh, I thought you were British!
M: No, just anal-retentive and well-spoken.
Q: … Oh.
Oh, those innumerate Swedes!
As most have read elsewhere (galleycat’s coverage has been pretty entertaining), Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary for the Nobel prizes for literature, has slammed American literature as too insular, whining that we “don’t translate enough” and “don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature.”
This complaint that the American market doesn’t translate enough world literature is an old one, but the numbers that are usually cited aren’t quite as clear-cut as they might at first seem. Thing is, the lion’s share of books translated into other languages are translated from English—American and British authors—and are big bestsellers. John Grisham. Stephen King. Sue Grafton. Maeve Binchy. Frank McCourt. J.K. Rowling. Lemony Snicket. Etc.
These books aren’t translated because the publishers in France and Turkey and Poland are keen to engage in an international dialogue with American literature. These books are translated because there is a market for these books, and because these books sell, and sell well.
The real test is to ignore translations from English, and for someone to examine how many books each market translates from a more obscure source. South Korea, say. Or, heck, let’s say Japan. Big country, big body of literature. I’d wager that the numbers will be awfully similar.
