storytelling

Remember I said that once in a while I'd post novel covers that I like? I'm paying more attention now because soon I'll be asked about my thoughts on the TTTT cover. Here's one I like a lot for its simplicity and elegant lines. Wouldn't be right for TTTT, but it caught my eye and my imagination.

I also like this cover, which is nothing like the first one. It's complex and intriguing and the colors work for me. I love the use of text to the top of the image, but I wish they had skipped the stark white blurb at the bottom, which distracts and unbalances the whole.

Finally, they've re-released Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping: A Novel, which I greatly admired the first time around. And now look at this fantastic cover. A little too sober for the rather sharp TTTT, but I'd be thrilled anyway if I got something like this.

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I saw The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories in a book store in Boston (and to the person who posted in the comments on this topic: yes, great bookstores in Cambridge, no question). As it's a big fat book in hardcover, I didn't buy it until I got home.

I love the title of this book already, and the bits I read in the bookstore made me want to read the rest of it. You'll note, if you go to Amazon or look at reviews such as this one by Denis Dutton at the Washington Post, that the critics aren't much pleased with this book, though Dutton gives Christopher Booker credit for his style:

Booker, a British columnist who was founding editor of Private Eye, possesses a remarkable ability to retell stories. His prose is a model of clarity, and his lively enthusiasm for fictions of every description is infectious. He covers Greek and Roman literature, fairy tales, European novels and plays, familiar Arabic and Japanese tales, Native American folk tales, and movies from the silent era on. He is an especially adept guide through the twists and characters of Wagner’s operas. His artfully entertaining summaries jogged many warm memories of half-forgotten novels and films.

I wish as much pleasure could be derived from the psychology on which he bases his hypothesis. Booker has been working on this project for 34 years, and his quaint psychological starting point sadly shows its age. He believes Carl Jung’s theory of archetypes and self-realization can explain story patterns. Alas, Jung serves him very poorly.

I have yet to sit down with this book, but I'm keeping an open mind. I'm not so interested in the psychological underpinnings of a grand theory, as I am in the fact that Booker looks at storytelling of all kinds and doesn't priviledge one over another. I wonder what he thinks of fan fiction.

I'll review this when I've worked my way through, which may take a while.

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The paperback edition of Fire Along the Sky is due out in November, and here's the cover. The ever watchful Rachel must have seen that it was up on Amazon, because she asked if I liked it.

I like it better than some of my covers, but I'm not sure that it gives a sense of what the novel is about. This cover makes me think of the wild west and vultures and mesas and deserts.

So now I have good news and less good news. Not bad news, really. Good news or not-so-bad news first? Good, I think.

While I was in Manhattan this last week I signed the contracts for Tied to the Tracks, which will now be coming out with Putnam. That wasn't the original plan, you may remember. Bantam has published all the Wilderness novels and indicated great interest in Tied to the Tracks, but after lots of talk and back and forth, there was a major Change of Plans.

Leona Nevler is my new editor at Putnam, which means she's the person who acquired Tied to the Tracks (and also Pajama Jones). Leona has been in the business a long time, she's insightful and sharp and funny and elegant in a Jackie Kennedy kind of way. Of course, that meant I was doomed to spill something -- not once, but twice -- on my white blouse during lunch. But she made light of it, which was very kind.

So the bottom line is that Queen of Swords may well be my last novel for Bantam, but I have a new nest at Putnam/Berkeley, and I feel comfortable there already. Which brings me to the other news.

I think I have to face the fact that I'm not going to get Queen of Swords to Bantam by October. I hope to get it done by January, though. This means that QS won't be out until (at the eariest) the fall of 2006. I get a dozen emails every day assuring me that y'all are eager eager eager to read QS, but you can be sure of two things: I'm just as eager to finish it as you are to read it, and I'll do everything in my power to make sure it's worth the wait.

What I'm hoping is that you'll find Tied to the Tracks (which should be out in the spring or summer) a suitable stopgap.

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