Why people write

How do you explain the fact that so many people write books that are never published? Or they are published, perhaps even financed by the authors themselves, but read by almost no one?

Thousands of books are published each year, yet thousands more are written and unpublished, or started and never finished, or envisioned in someone's mind but never put down on paper. How many people say something like, "I could write a book ..."?

Alfred Kazin

Perhaps the answer to all such queries can be found in the words of literary critic Alfred Kazin: "In a very real sense, the writer writes in order to teach himself; to understand himself, to satisfy himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratification, is a curious anticlimax."

The actual publication of a book is, in so many instances, truly anticlimactic. This is probably not true of professional writers, those who actually make their living by writing books. If their books are not published, their families don't eat.

Yet for amateur writers — those who write books to see if they can, those who have a story that is burning inside them, those with ideas bursting to get out — the actual writing, not the illusive possibility of publication, is the true objective.

Underground future

When sci-fi writers contemplate an Earth that is no longer inhabitable, they usually think up — sending people into space to start over on another planet. Hugh Howey thought down instead and put his human survivors into silos buried deep underground.

The first novel in the trilogy is Wool (2012). Why wool? Because capital punishment involves sending condemned prisoners out of the silo to clean the few windows with a wool cloth before the poisoned environment kills them. And the windows often need cleaning, it seems.

Another way of keeping down the population is to have a lottery. the winners being permitted to have a child.

Howey kills off one main character after another in the early chapters, and so when Juliette is sentenced to a cleaning we don't know if she will survive or not. But she survives long enough to discover another silo and eventually inspire a better future for her home silo.

The silo goes down 144 floors, meaning that characters must constantly climb or descend using the tiring staircases. There are no elevators. Juliette works way down in the mechanical area when she is chosen as the new sheriff of the silo. The man who thinks he should be the one actually running the silo objects to her selection, leading to her being sent out to clean.

The people of the silo know nothing of past civilizations before the silo was built. Horses and elephants seem mythical to them. They don't even know that there are 49 other silos, at least until Juliette finds one of them. War there has left few survivors, and war threatens her home silo as well. Can she save either or both silos?

Wool is first-rate science fiction, both a great story and an intriguing imagining of a possible future.

Definitions in conflict

Nagasaki destroyed by atomic bomb

When near the end of World War II, the Allies demanded that Japan surrender, the Japanese premier replied with a statement that included the word mokusatsu. Unfortunately, as Peter Farb tells the story in Word Play, this Japanese word has two meanings. The Allies translated it as meaning "take no notice of." But the word can also mean "consider," which is what the premier may actually have meant. As a consequence, atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Might a different translation have changed history?

Yet even without translating from one language to another, words with opposing meanings can create difficulties. One wonders whether the Japanese ever get confused over the word mokusatsu.

English speakers can certainly get confused over their own language. Does the verb dust mean to take away dust, as when cleaning a room, or does it mean to add dust, as when dusting crops?

If you say that your suitcases are unpacked, do you mean that everything has been taken out of them or that everything is still in them?

If you sanction something, are you allowing it or punishing someone for doing it?

If you peruse a book, do you mean you read it carefully or simply skim through it? You can find both meanings in a dictionary.

Usually we use context and have no problem with such words. Sometimes, as at the end of World War II, the problem can be profound.

Big ideas

Jane Smiley calls Mary Shelley's Frankenstein the first high-concept novel. I think Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, written a century earlier, might take that title.

What is a high-concept novel? I think of it as a novel with a plot that can be stated in just one or two sentences. Ot it could be said that it is a novel based on an idea. The idea in Frankenstein is about creating life. In Robinson Crusoe, the idea is about a man surviving on a desert island.

Great novels like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Moby-Dick could also be described as high-concept novels, although they are of course about much more than a boy and a slave going down the Mississippi River together on a raft and a ship's captain pursuing a great white whale at all costs.

In contrast, such great novels as Middlemarch or Bleak House would be difficult to summarize in a few words. Are they better novels? Not necessarily.

I enjoy novels of both kinds, but I must admit that a high-concept novel is more likely to catch my eye in a bookstore. And it is usually easier to become engrossed in. You have some idea what the story is about before you even start reading because you have read the dust jacket or the back cover of a paperback. You probably know the idea before you open the book.

Some of the best novels have a little of both. Ann Patchett does not normally write high-concept novels, but I think her Tom Lake, reviewed here recently, excels because it has a little of both in it. It is about a woman who finally tells her grown daughters about her long-ago romance with a famous Hollywood actor. But she doesn't tell them everything. That is the high concept that draws reader in. The story itself is more low-concept.

Other recent novels of note similarly have a high concept to get readers interested, then go off in unexpected directions. I am thinking of such novels as Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt and The Sacrament by Olaf Olafsson.

Reading whenever

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau thought reading was so important that he sought to "consecrate morning hours" to doing it.

Not everyone tries to do the important things in the morning, but Thoreau did. Similarly, my mind works best in the morning, but that is when I do my writing, including any emails or letters I want to write. I also run my errands and schedule most of my appointments in the morning. Not only does my mind work best in the morning, but my whole body does. I get up early, so my mornings last a long time. When I have something important to do, I try to do it before noon.

Do I not consider reading important? Well, yes, I do, but I reserve that for the afternoon, after a nap. For me, a nap is like starting a new day. Rarely do I read — or write — in the evening, when I am tired.

Other readers do things differently, of course. They may have a job during the day or children to raise. They must read whenever they can — in bed before going to sleep, at mealtimes or perhaps on weekends when they can find a few quiet moments. Others read mostly on vacations or when on airplanes. Or they listen to books while doing other things.

Does it matter when we read or how? Perhaps not, providing it works for us. Providing we are able to concentrate on what we are reading. Providing we are able to enjoy it or learn from it, whatever our objective may be.

Living the Constitution

I realized just how much the Constitution is a national Roshach test. Everyone, including me, sees what they want.

A.J. Jacobs, The Year of Living Constitutionally

Author A.J. Jacobs doesn't just write his books. He lives them.

Before writing about the Encyclopaedia Britannica in The Know-It-All, he read it, cover to cover. Before writing The Year of Living Biblically, he devoted a year trying to follow Hebrew law to the letter. And so before writing The Year of Living Constitutionally, he devoted himself to doing just that.

He wore 18th century clothing, carried a musket in reenactments of Revolutionary battles and tried his best to understand what men like James Madison and Benjamin Franklin were thinking when the U.S. Constitution was written.

Jacobs also did his best to take seriously parts of the Constitution that are now mostly ignored. The Constitution is rarely amended, but he circulated a petition to amend it so that instead of just one chief executive there would be several.

The Constitution actually has a provision allowing pirate ships to act in support of the country. So he borrowed a friend's boat, called it a pirate ship and tried to get a "Letter of Marque and Reprisal."

The Constitution prohibits the quartering of soldiers in a citizen's home without consent. So he gave his consent to quartering a solder.

Jacobs is a humorist, and there is much to laugh at in his book. At the same time he makes his readers take a good look at the Constitution, both what it says and what it doesn't say, how both interpreting it too strictly and not strictly enough can lead to trouble.

When books show wear

Jules Verne

We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.

Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth

As the person in charge of my condo association library, one of my main responsibilities is to decide which books stay and which books go. Residents donate books almost every week, and as shelf space is limited, whenever one book is placed on a shelf, another has to be taken off.

How do I decide which books need to go?

First, I look for duplicates. Sometimes we have a book in hardback and the same book in paperback. I see no need for two copies, no matter how popular a book may be. One of them has to go, usually but not always the paperback.

I may look at the publication dates. New books are more likely to be keepers than old books.

Some books have been on the shelf for a long time, and to my knowledge unread by anyone. They are vulnerable.

And then there are the books that show obvious wear. This happens sooner with paperbacks, of course.  Many paperbacks are not designed for multiple readings, and some readers tend to be hard on paperbacks. With clothbound books, it is the dust jackets that first show wear. Not all readers remove the dust jacket when reading a book, and then dust jackets do not last long. I do not shelve hardbacks without their dust jackets.

And that brings me, finally, to the quotation from Jules Verne above.  When a book shows wear, it is actually a good sign. It shows the book has been read and even loved. Someone spent some time with it, perhaps folded back some pages, perhaps even placed a coffee mug on it or spilled some food on it.

I may have to remove worn books from these library shelves, but I do so with respect. Better wear than mold, as Verne said.

Have you a heart?

As short as Hard Times is, at least for a Charles Dickens novel, it packs in a lot of story. Perhaps there are even two stories.

There is, for example, the big story — the impact of the Industrial Revolution in England. Coketown is a dirty industrial community where the haves and have-nots know their place. Then there's the more personal and more interesting story about how this social structure impacts two of the children of one of the town's wealthiest men, Thomas Gradgrind. 

Gradgrind (as usual, the names Dickens chooses for his characters say a lot about them) teaches his children the importance of Facts (capitalized to show their importance to him). Anything whimsical, anything fun, anything fictional is discouraged. Growing up in this environment,  Tom and Louisa seem lost and purposeless. When her father arranges a marriage with a much older man, Josiah Bounderby, Louisa accepts, assuming there can be nothing better for her in life than marriage to someone she doesn't love. Tom, meanwhile, takes a job, but wastes his money gambling, a habit Louisa supports on the sly.

There are a variety of developments, including a younger man who tempts Louisa and a bank robbery in which Tom may or may not be involved.

The climax comes when Gradgrind, finally realizing how his teachings have negatively impacted his children, asks another character, "have you a heart?" Some things, it seems, may be more important than Facts.

Hunting hunters

Someone is hunting hunters in C.J. Box's 2008 novel Blood Trail.

In a western state where hunting is a way of life, this is a very big deal for Game Warden Joe Pickett. Hunting is prohibited until the killer can be found, and because the law enforcement personnel are less than competent, as usual in these novels, it falls on Pickett to discover what's really going on.

Strong characters are key in Box thrillers, and this one is no exception. Joe himself has his demons, and his temper gets him into big trouble by the end. His relationships with Marybeth, his wife, and his daughters, who mature as the series continues, are vital. And then there is his relationship with the governor, for whom he has become a private investigator on the public payroll, and with Stella, the governor's aide, with whom Joe has a history.

Klamath Moore, a radical anti-hunting activist, comes to the state to cause trouble just as the murders pile up. Is he connected to the crimes? Is he perhaps the killer? And then there is Randy Pope, Joe's boss, who may also be his greatest enemy.

Blood Trail lives up to its title. It is a violent, bloody novel that never ceases to entertain.

Backbone of literature?

Cheating is the backbone of literature.

Lixing Sun, The Liars of Nature and the Nature of Liars

In the Charles Dickens novel Hard Times, a man raises his children with Facts. Anything that is not factual is prohibited. This includes novels, fairy tales, music, poetry, jokes or anything else that brings joy, especially to children.

This father, Dickens shows as his novel goes on, is the cheater, depriving his own children of joy and happiness and love.

Lixing Sun

In his book, Lixing Sun argues that lying and cheating are the backbone not just of literature but of life itself. Up to a point anyway, he has a point.

One thing you can say about fiction, however, is that it represents truth in advertising. We are told upfront that it is all lies. Fiction means it's not true. Yet it can still be entertaining. It can still be informative. And it can still contain truth. Jesus told parables not because they were true stories but because they conveyed truth. In the same way, a novel like Hard Times conveys truth.

Sun has a better point, however, when he observes that much of what we call nonfiction is also, in fact, fiction. His own book, as I mentioned in my review the other day, illustrates this. Memoirs are not entirely reliable. Neither are history books or even science books. Mistakes are made. Some facts are ignored, while others are highlighted. All writers are biased in one way or another.

So is cheating really the backbone of literature? To me that point of view seems too much like that of the father in the Charles Dickens novel. 

Unable to stay

It isn't fair to be the kind of creature who is able to love but unable to stay.

Charlotte McConaghy, Migrations

Following Arctic terns as they migrate from the top of the world to the bottom in search of fish is just one of the migrations Charlotte McConaghy writes about in her 2020 novel Migrations.

More significantly the novel is about the personal migrations of its main character, Franny Stone, always on the move, always looking for her mother, always trying to escape her guilt, always looking for death while clinging to life.

McConaghy imagines a future where animals are mostly extinct. Among the few birds still living are Arctic terns, who once again are making their annual migration in search of the few fish that remain. Franny manages to get aboard a rare fishing boat. She promises the birds will lead them to fish, if any fish still exist, even though the ship's captain has never gone below the Equator.

The narrative goes back and forth, from the present to the past — Franny's childhood, her time in prison and her marriage to a professor committed to protecting animal life. She lacks academic credentials herself, but in honor of him she pretends to be a scientist as she pursues the terns.

Repeatedly in the novel, Franny dives into frigid water, as much to feel life again as to flirt with death. The narrative is something of a back and forth, sort of like migration.

Book of lies

Lies work because most of us expect the truth. And society wouldn't work if nobody expected the truth.

In The Liars of Nature and the Nature of Liars (2023), Lixing Sun looks at lying at all levels of life, from bacteria to human beings. Liars are found everywhere. Birds, even those that supposedly mate for life, cheat on their mates. Some insects pretend to the leaves. Many species of animals "play possum," or pretend to be dead to fool predators interested only in live food.

In the last half of his book, the author focuses on human lies, from cheating in business deals to cheating in marriages. He categorizes lies, some being destructive and hurtful, while others are necessary for making others feel good, such as by telling one's wife that the dress doesn't make her look fat.

Some lying, even the hurtful kind, Sun says, is necessary for human society to function. Yet, once lying becomes too frequent, too obvious, nobody can trust anyone else. And then everything collapses.

"Cheating not only underpins many aspects of our economic, intellectual, artistic, and social lives, it also helps define our desired moral values," the author writes. "Without lies and deceptions, who would care about honesty?"

Unfortunately Sun does his share of lying, as when he confuses his political opinions with the truth. His casual attitude toward truth threatens the integrity of his own book about lies.

One book, one reader

Seminary Co-op Bookstore

In his book In Praise of Good Bookstores, Jeff Deutsch, points out that in 2019, the Seminary Co-op Bookstore in Chicago, which he manages, sold roughly 28,000 titles — not books, but titles. Of these, nearly 17,000 were single copies. Think about that for a minute.

That means that in a year's time, nearly 17,000 different books sold just a single copy in that store. The bookstore stocked all these books just to sell one copy. Most books, in fact, sell very few copies. Even the so-called best-sellers, in most cases, don't actually sell that many copies. There are so many books being published and so many readers that relatively few people may be interested in reading the same book.

I have been a member of LibraryThing for many years. You might call this social media for bibliophiles. You list your library on the web site and post your reviews of the books you read. You can also have conversations about those books or anything having to do with books.

LibraryThing has thousands of members, yet I've noticed that several of the books I own are owned by nobody else on the site.  One of these is The Photographer's Guide to Great Lakes Lighthouses. Meanwhile, more than 93,000 other members own Pride and Prejudice.

As a reader, here are my conclusions:

1. I am glad people write books even though relatively few people will ever want to read them.

2. I am glad there are publishers still willing to publish books that few people will want to pay money for.

3. The more different books stocked in a bookstore, the better.

4. The longer these books are kept on their shelves, the better.

5. Eventually every book will find its reader.