Obscure books can have a future

Readers are almost alway particular to some obscure author or another, and so, as long as a book is available in Earth's big bookstore (which I construe as every bookstore and every used book store and every library in the world), it has a chance of finding a new audience.

Jane Smiley, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel

Jane Smiley

There's a lot to like about the long Jane Smiley sentence printed above. Let's take it apart.

"Readers are almost always particular to some obscure author or another ..."

Many readers stick with the best-sellers, reading the same books as everybody else. But Smiley is talking about those more serious readers who discover particular authors and then wonder why everybody else isn't reading their books.

In my younger days, as I've written about previously, I was fond of Edward Lewis Wallant and D. Keith Mano. Why, I wondered, weren't their novels best-sellers? Today few people have even heard of them. More recently I have become enamored with Dexter Palmer and Olaf Olafsson. Why aren't other people reading them, too?

You probably feel the same way about "some obscure author or another."

"... Earth's big bookstore (which I construe as every bookstore and every used book store and every library in the world) ..."

Sadly, neither bookstores nor public libraries keep books around for very long. They need to make room for newer books. Meanwhile used book stores keep disappearing. Yet, as I wrote about a few days ago, people hate to throw out books after they have finished with them. Thus older books by some of those obscure authors can still be found in thrift shops, garage sales, estate sales and other places.

"... it has a chance of finding a new audience."

Some obscure books don't find their audience when first published. Yet books can actually last a long time, and only partly because people hate to destroy them. Sooner or later, as in the case of Moby-Dick and many other classics, they can find their readers. Obscurity doesn't always last forever.

Making a book

Writing, at least on the professional level, is a group effort. We don't normally think of it that way, of course. If someone's name is on the book, the magazine article or the newspaper story, that is the person who gets the credit — or the blame. Yet there are others, usually many others, who are involved.

Rebecca Lee makes this clear in her 2022 book How Words Get Good. Her expertise is book publishing, and in her career she has been involved in many of the steps in the process of making words good, now including writing a book herself.

Even though authors are the ones whose names are on the books, they need help. They need agents to find someone to publish their work, for example. They need editors. Many authors are terrible spellers. They make mistakes of all kinds, and writers are often the last ones to notice their own mistakes. (I know this from sad experience.)

And then there are proof readers. What is the difference between a copy editor and a proof reader?  Lee tells us. Essentially, a copy editor gets a manuscript ready to be printed. A proof reader checks for errors made by the printer. Does the printed work match what was supposed to be printed?

Lee even devotes chapters to footnotes (her own footnotes are superb, well worth reading), cover designs, blurbs, fonts and what happens when books go out of print. Her book covers an amazing amount of territory — probably too much, actually — and it is a wonderful resource for anyone wondering what goes into making a book.

Feelings attached

But it (a story) exists not as words written in books but as images with feelings attached.

Jane Smiley, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel

"Images with feelings attached." I like that phrase. 

A few days ago I posted something on the subject of how reading a book a second time is different from reading it the first time ("Same book, different experience," Aug. 17, 2026). This is what Jane Smiley is talking about in the line above quoted from her book, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel.

Marlon Brando
 in a scene from The Godfather

I think this is one reason movies based on novels we have read tend to be so disappointing. The images in the films conflict with the images left in our mind from the novels. Because film images are so powerful, they tend to overpower those in novels. I read Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather before I saw the movie, yet ever after it has been the movie images that come to mind, not those I had while reading the book. I can't even remember how the novel differed from the movie.

One way to rekindle those original images is to reread the novel, although even then the images in your mind will be different from those you had when you first read the book, and they also may be heavily influenced by the movie.

Yet we still usually want to watch movies adapted from novels we love. We always hope against hope that the images in the film will conform with the images that linger with us from reading the book. Unless the film is really, really good, as The Godfather is, we are usually disappointed.

A distinctive style

Thomas Hart Benton's artistic style is so distinct that even an art amateur like myself can recognize one of his paintings easily. Yet, as Justin Wolff tells us in Thomas Hart Benton: A Life (2012), it took years for him to develop that style. Look at his early paintings and they look nothing like those we know him for.

Benton was the son of U.S. Senator Thomas Hart Benton, who wanted his son and namesake to follow in his footsteps. Instead the younger Benton went his own way, lived in poverty for years and eventually found the style that made him more famous than his father.

Benton called himself a realist, known for his murals that seem to shimmer. His images, while stationary, seem to writhe. Nobody has adequately described Thomas Hart Benton paintings, yet they are instantly recognizable.

Benton met and married Rita, the love of his life,  and she stuck with him through his years of poverty, his heavy drinking, his carousing and his failures, protecting his image as well as his images, selling and promoting his paintings.

It may be difficult to believe that Jackson Pollock, known for his abstract drip paintings, was his student, as well as one of his closest friends. Benton's hot-and-cold relationship with President Harry S. Truman also makes fascinating reading. Benton wanted Truman's approval, yet Truman tended to say what he felt, not necessarily what others wanted him to say.

What I find hard to swallow in Wolff's biography is his conclusion that Benton should have been more like Pollock, more open to abstract expressionism. True, Benton may have been out of step with many of his contemporaries, but he ultimately found his style, and that style served him well.

Library longings

Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag once called her personal library an archive of longings. Can this be true, not just for her but for everyone who reads? Perhaps.

You have heard it said that you are what you eat. Can we also say, "You are what you read?" No, I don't think so. But we might say, "You would like to be what you read."

This is sort of the point of James Thurber's famous short story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." Mitty is an ordinary man who imagines himself the hero of a variety of adventures, in part as a result of what he reads.

And so, those who read thrillers, mysteries and adventure stories probably imagine themselves the hero. How would they solve the crime or defeat the bad guys or get out of an impossible situation?

Those who read romances probably imagine themselves involved in similar love affairs.

Those reading the Bible long to be better than they are. They probably imagine Jesus telling them, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

A few weeks ago I wrote about Marilyn Monroe liking to be photographed reading a James Joyce novel. Perhaps she longed to be someone who actually read and understood James Joyce novels.

Want to know what someone longs for? Look at their books.

The Oxford comma

Until I read Anne Curzan's Says Who? I didn't know the term "the Oxford comma." I was well aware of the question the term refers to, but I didn't recall hearing the term itself previously.

The question, which most people never think about and is important mainly to writers and editors, is this: When words are printed in a series, should there be a comma before the and?

That is, should the title of the Steve Martin-John Candy movie be Planes, Trains and Automobiles," as it actually is, or should it have been called Planes, Trains, and Automobiles? Who cares? you ask. Well, those in the word business do care.

I have a newspaper background, and so I almost always eliminate this comma. (I do include it in quotations.)  In newspapers we try to save space wherever we can, and even a little comma takes up space. Why bother with an unnecessary comma?

The trouble is, sometimes the comma is necessary. Curzan gives an example, often cited. A book dedication supposedly read, "This book is dedicated to my parents, Ayn Rand and God." Without the comma, the dedication suggests that God and Ayn Rand are the author's parents. That is probably not the case. And so a comma is needed.

But take another phrase mentioned by Curzan: "my brother, the doctor, and the nurse." The comma indicates the brother is a doctor. If that is not the case, the comma is misleading and should have been left out.

It is called the Oxford comma because way back in 1893 Oxford University Press adopted a style that this comma be included in any series. The Associated Press thinks differently, and most U.S. newspapers follow the AP Stylebook.

Yet, as the two examples above show us, the comma is sometimes needed. Other times it should be left out. Most of the time, of course, it doesn't matter at all. Do whatever you please.

What if ...?

The late Clifford D. Simak, like other science fiction writers, started his stories with an idea. In his case, the more outlandish the better.

Reading the nine stories that make up All the Traps of Earth and Other Stories (1962), one can imagine him wondering, "What if ....?"

What if the creatures on a distant planet conquer others by sacrificing themselves? ("Drop Dead")

What if an alien on Earth gets drunk by listening to the sad stories all humans have to tell? ("Crying Jag")

What if chemically-induced homesickness were the only way people could be persuaded to leave their home planet and travel in space? ("Condition of Employment")

What if a time machine leaves explorers stranded thousands of years in the past? ("Project Mastodon")

What if aliens from another planet seem to be perfect baby sitters, accepting no payment because they are stealing the youth from their charges? ("The Sitters")

And so it goes in these totally unbelievable, yet entertaining, tales.

Yet I notice that the shorter his short stories are, the better they usually are. Sometimes he packs too many "what ifs" into a story, as in "Installment Plan," and it becomes too much to manage. One or two weird ideas per story seem to work better.