Reading Wednesday

[sabotabby]

Just finished: Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth. I ended up really enjoying this—it's funny, it's dark, the language and the characters were engaging, and it's gay as fuck. But—there's always a but lately—I'm noticing an epidemic lately of books where I read the first few chapters and I'm in love, and by the end, the book ends up being less than the sum of its parts, with an ending that feels just kind of...okay. And I'm wondering if it's because authors are sending out the first chapter or two of their manuscripts, which are workshopped and brilliant, and the rest of the manuscript isn't held to that initial standard.

Because the first two or three chapters of this are incredible, and while the rest of the book is strong, it doesn't end on the same kind of high. Specifically, by the end I was unclear as to why Audrey, Harper, and Merritt managed to somehow escape the gruesome fate of the 1903 girls. It felt like there was going to be more of a link to the past, particularly with the twist that Bo was making a movie about the making of the movie, but it never came. This said, it was still very entertaining and I'd recommend it.

Civil Elegies and Other Poems by Dennis Lee. I very seldom read poetry these days but one of my novel characters has a tattoo of the line: "And best of all is finding a place to be /
in the early years of a better civilization," so I figured I'd better re-read the whole thing.

It's a hell of a poem. It's basically Toronto's "Howl" or "Waste Land"—a lament for a Canada lost to American influence and late-state capitalism. It's kind of ironic given how old it is—the Toronto that Lee describes is in decline, but a thousand times more human than what we have now. There's no condos built without hot water because they were only ever meant as investment properties while a carpenter building tiny shelters for homeless people faces charges from the city. Lee wrote his epic in the shadow of Rochdale, a free radical university that he'd help found that became a drug den and finally the target of state violence, and the grief is fresh in his words.

The rest of the poems are good, but more what I'd expect from Canadian poetry of that era—poems about place and relationships. Worth reading, but lacking in the searing intensity of the title poem.

Currently reading: The Forgotten Daughter by Joanna Goodman. Ugggh this is such a frustrating book. There's very little fiction (at least English-language fiction) that deals with the FLQ and the October Crisis, so of course I wanted to read it. And it also deals with the Duplessis Orphans, which I barely know anything about and is yet another fascinatingly horrific episode of Canadian history. This book is about Véronique, the daughter of an FLQ member who killed Quebec Labour Minister Pierre Laporte. Véronique is a drug smuggler and a passionate separatist. For reasons unknown to me, the reader, she falls for James, a half-English journalist and Liberal. Meanwhile, James' older sister Elodie, a Duplessis Orphan who was declared "mentally r*tarded" and institutionalized as a child, struggles for justice for her lost youth.

My big problem with this book is that I can't buy Véronique and James' relationship at all. I don't see what she sees in a guy a decade her senior with opposite politics to hers when her big thing is politics. He doesn't seem to like her, beyond that she's beautiful. It might work if the relationship was portrayed as the deeply dysfunctional hot mess that it would be, but I think they're supposed to be star-crossed lovers or something. I also just find James awful. Véronique is also awful but she's supposed to be a disaster trash baby so I'm fine with that. And again, I'm all for awful characters but not when the author seems unaware of their flaws.

I'm also slightly jealous every time I read a published novel that breaks the kinds of rules I always get called on for breaking in my writing. Like James' journalism does not read as realistic or accurate, and there's a lot of telling rather than showing, and I'm fine with those things but people keep on critiquing me for doing them.

Basically, fascinating story, but I would have done a major structural edit to it and I'm annoyed at the Canadian publishing industry doesn't hire structural editors anymore.

Comments

[lizbee]

And I'm wondering if it's because authors are sending out the first chapter or two of their manuscripts, which are workshopped and brilliant, and the rest of the manuscript isn't held to that initial standard.

I suspect so! And editors are overworked, underpaid, and expected to handle way too many projects, so nothing gets the attention it really needs.

[sabotabby]

That was true when I was in publishing and it's even more so now.

[kore]

And then right around when I tried to get into publishing (I would have been good at editing! Proofreading even!) everyone started getting fired. It all started with the Microsoft word programs.

[frandroid]

Paul Rose's son Félix has spent a lifetime not talking about October 70 with his dad, and then when he decided to do so, he made a documentary about it. I haven't seen it yet but the reviews are good.

[sabotabby]

Ooh, sounds interesting, except for the bit where I have to summon the will to watch a documentary. I would rather learn things through books.

[frandroid]

Basically you need to become a somewhat successful author for your editor to devote enough resources to you. But if you become too successful, you also get to ignore your editor? :)

[sabotabby]

It's true. I would never ignore my editor though.

[nyctanthes]

I'm noticing an epidemic lately of books where I read the first few chapters and I'm in love, and by the end, the book ends up being less than the sum of its parts, with an ending that feels just kind of...okay.

I had a string of books like that, a while back. So I greatly reduced the number of books read that are over 250 pages - especially of new-to-me authors. (What awkward phrasing, ugh sorry.) It's helped. And at least if they're disappointing, they're short?

[sabotabby]

Hah good strategy. This was intriguing enough that I wanted to read to the end (as is the one I'm currently reading) and a book has to be actively bad for me to nope out of it. My big problem is that Overdrive doesn't obviously put the number of pages so whenever I put a hold on something, I have no idea if it's a 250-page book or a 600-page book.

[sabotabby]

But it also makes me far more appreciative of writers who know how to do a solid ending.

[kore]

Yeah, I think a lot of people tend to overwrite (I know I do) and a big part of an editors' job is focusing and shaping. Without that, writers just tend to, well, write on and on, a lot of the time. And the reading public is really fond of loooong books right now, so they don't get trimmed down the way they might.

[sabotabby]

AND YET my publisher friend told me that my novel, at 140,000 words, should be cut down to between 100,000-120,000. To which I was like, "yes, obviously!" That is good advice. Are other people...not getting that advice?

[nyctanthes]

I'd imagine that, without an editor, a lot of writing in search of the main point doesn't get cut.

For me, I have fewer problems with meh-to-awful endings (though they certainly exist) and more issue with soggy middles. There are so many of them! That's where it would be awesome to see some greater editorial oversight. Or, you know, any. :P

[sabotabby]

That's definitely the problem with mine—the ending's bangin'. But that's why editors are a good thing!

[moon_custafer]

As a would-be writer, I admit I’m amazed by/envious of people whose problem is overwriting. Like, how does that happen? I’ve only once managed to break 50,000 words (*David Byrne voice*: SAY SOMETHING ONCE WHY SAY IT AGAIN?)

[sabotabby]

That was me right up until this one, which I’ve managed to get down to 122,000, which is still too long. And of course it ended up being the first in a series.

My problem was really getting invested in minor characters? Like everyone had to have their reasons, which complicated the story immensely.

[kore]

an epidemic lately of books where I read the first few chapters and I'm in love, and by the end, the book ends up being less than the sum of its parts, with an ending that feels just kind of...okay. And I'm wondering if it's because authors are sending out the first chapter or two of their manuscripts, which are workshopped and brilliant, and the rest of the manuscript isn't held to that initial standard.

I would bet at least part of that is the arterial loss of editors from publishing houses -- a lot of work got farmed out to contract editors, but it's hard for them to make a living and they can't handle the work full-time employees would be able to. And writers' agents often act as their editors now, altho editing and agenting are very different.

[sabotabby]

When I was in publishing, the job of the substantive editor and the copyeditor and proofreader were all getting mushed into one. Now it's worse because that person doesn't even necessarily exist.

[kore]

YES, exactly.

[minoanmiss]

*reads this discussion and is edified*

[maeve66]

Oh, my god I want that FLQ novel to be better than it sounds. As it is, I don't think I can read it. But the Paul Rose's son's documentary! I have GOT to find that! I am happy with documentaries, and I've never seen one on the FLQ, which was my most passionate post-cause at age 14 when I had a very deep separatist phase. Yes, as an American revolutionary marxist teenager. That's what happens when you go to Montreal by yourself at age 14 just after (man, or just before? June 1980) the latest failure to win a vote on separation. I know I had "Oui" stickers all over my freshman year binder.

[sabotabby]

Oh, I hear you. I think I was about 15 and was enamoured of the FLQ (but it was a very brief phase). I will say the book does a decent job on their politics, for good and ill. The FLQ come off as overly sympathetic for probably about the first 4/5 of the book before they are revealed to be Pathetic and Awful at the end, though mainly because James is so unlikable as a character that any of his political arguments fall flat.