An Upsetting Tap on the Shoulder

In a conversation with novelist John Le Carré arranged and recorded by the New York Times Book Review, the espionage historian Ben Macintyre spoke of being recruited for the British secret service MI6 by a man calling himself “Major Halliday”:

It was the typical sort of tap on the shoulder. It was quite amusing, really. A don that I didn’t know terribly well came barreling up and he said, “What are you doing after university?” I said, “I don’t really know.” And he said, “Well, there are some parts of the Foreign Office that are different from other parts of the Foreign Office. In a sense, they are different from the Foreign Office itself.” He went on for about five minutes. Of course, I knew exactly what he was saying, although he never actually said it.

So I went along to Carlton House Terrace [where MI6 had an office]. And there was very clearly more than one Major Halliday, because other people I know were recruited by a completely different Major Halliday. Mine had on socks and sandals, which was quite upsetting at the time.

Le Carré’s new novel is A Legacy of Spies. Macintyre’s latest is Rogue Heroes.

Who Wrote “The Isle That Time Forgot”?

While researching the last weekly Robin posting, I stumbled across a curious dispute over the question of who wrote “The Isle That Time Forgot,” the story in Batman, #10 (April-May 1942), that showed Dick Grayson turning either eight or thirteen or fourteen, depending on which panel you read and how.

Of course the story was credited to Bob Kane, the artist who had brought Batman to DC Comics and tried to take full credit for the character for years. But by that point DC had hired Kane’s original studio team of Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson, and George Roussos, and employed other freelancers as well. The company didn’t keep records from that period, so it’s hard to link particular stories with their creators.

Both Robinson and Roussos reportedly identified “The Isle That Time Forgot” as their work. For other stories and other details, fans have tried to fill in the gaps, but identifying artists by their visual styles is easier than fingering writers.

In DC’s recent reprints and the Grand Comics Database, “The Isle That Time Forgot” is credited to Joseph Greene. That identification appears to rest on the judgment of Martin O’Hearn, apparently based on “comparing textual styles.” That would make this story Greene’s very first published comics script.

However, in 2002 writer Alvin Schwartz has queried whether some of the Batman stories from that period credited to Greene should really be credited to himself. He definitely wrote for DC at the time, couldn’t recall hearing of Joseph Greene, and spotted some details he didn’t think any other writer (except his own erstwhile writing partner Charley Greene) could have come up with.

Complicating matters, other sources say that Greene later wrote under Grosset’s in-house pen name of “Alvin Schwartz.” As a man actually named Alvin Schwartz, Alvin Schwartz was surprised by that. He was more aware than anybody how mid-century American publishing wanted him to use a name more like, well, “Bob Kane” (born Robert Kahn).

But Schwartz also notes that comics historians defending his place in the early comics industry have credited him with stories he never wrote. It’s all very tangled, and if all we have to go on is subjective judgments of “textual styles,” we must learn to live with uncertainty.

Banville, Black, and Beam

In my SCBWI New England workshop on writing within and without genre last year, I used the example of John Banville, the Irish novelist. Under his own name, he writes Man Booker Prize-winning literary fiction, such as The Sea. Under the name Benjamin Black, he writes murder mysteries—a popular genre.

The pseudonym isn’t even an open secret anymore, an the Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam makes clear in a new interview:

Q. How do Black and Banville divide their time?

A. I’ve got a schedule now. I do a Benjamin Black in the spring and early summer. I hate summer, so this is a wonderful excuse to sit in my room and pound away at a crime book. I write those quickly on the computer, in three to four months.

What I want from Benjamin Black is spontaneity; John Banville writes in longhand with a fountain pen. I can’t do them both at the same time. Banville was never much interested in character, dialogue, and plot, and Black is entirely character and dialogue and plot.

Which is indeed a common distinction between literary and genre fiction. Whether future generations will consider that distinction worthwhile is another matter.

What’s the Story Behind C. C. Colbert?

After reading the graphic historical novel Booth, scripted by C. C. Colbert and drawn by Tanitoc, I had a couple of questions.

The first was, What’s the story behind C. C. Colbert? The author bio on the back flap is awkwardly worded enough to suggest that whoever composed it was trying to write around something:

C. C. Colbert remains fascinated by the Civil War and has spent several years in the United States researching topics of American history. After earning a degree in history from Princeton, Colbert now lives and writes in Ireland.

I should hope that an author’s interest in Civil War history would not be exhausted by writing one book about it; otherwise, perhaps that person shouldn’t be writing that book. As for “researching topics” and “earning a degree,” I’ve done those things myself, so am I supposed to be impressed?

The author’s note inside refers to “my two sons,…and their father.” It also quotes the bleak opening of Dante’s Inferno: “midway in the journey…I came to myself in a dark wood, for the straight way was lost.” (Hollander translation, apparently.) What unstated psychological drama warranted a quote from Dante?

Publicity interviews lay bare the mystery. C. C. Colbert is the married name of Catherine Clinton, a noted historian of women’s lives in the era of the Civil War and biographer of Harriet Tubman and Mary Todd Lincoln. Several years ago she left full-time academia to write more books, including children’s books. More recently, in addition to experimenting with the comics form in Booth, Clinton has returned to the university life, at Queen’s University in Belfast.

So the vague phrase “earned a degree” blurs the fact that Clinton has a Ph.D. from Princeton, where she studied under James M. MacPherson, after earning a bachelor’s from Harvard and a master’s from the University of Sussex. Okay, now I’m impressed.

The clause “Colbert remains fascinated by the Civil War” has the invisible dependent clause “even though she’s written a fictional comic instead of another scholarly study,” apparently meant for an invisible audience of fellow scholars. And the mid-life shift in course is not, as I first theorized, a decision to leave academia, but a decision to return to it. Once again, I’m impressed.

TOMORROW: The second question about Booth.

Postapocalyptic Vampires Defeat Slender, Plotless Narratives

The publication of Justin Cronin’s The Passage, first of a “postapocalyptic vampire trilogy,” is bringing up a number of the issues I discussed last month at my SCBWI New England workshop on genre fiction.

One is the importance of plot in that approach to storytelling. Cronin told Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam:

At Iowa in the mid-1980s, we were all trained to write these slender, plotless narratives, in the manner of Raymond Carver. I don’t think I heard the word ‘plot’ uttered during the two years I was there.

So who encouraged Cronin in creating a plot? He told the New York Times:

He got the idea during afternoon jaunts around the neighborhood with his daughter, Iris, then 9, who rode her bicycle while Mr. Cronin jogged.

“The game I suggested was Let’s Plan a Novel Together,” said Mr. Cronin…

Because kids want plot! Young readers don’t stand for “slender, plotless narratives,” even if they do come with Iowa pedigree.

Interestingly, Cronin’s agent was able to sell the trilogy in 2007 when it was only “half written.” He may have mapped out the ending, which is a crucial part of any satisfactory plot, but he hadn’t written it. But that was enough to produce large sums for both book and movie rights.

Those large sums bring up the next big point: the artistic, and perhaps artificial, dichotomy between “genre fiction” and “literary fiction.” In our culture, one commands more money, the other more respect. According to the Times’s estimate off BookScan, Cronin’s first two “literary” novels, Mary and O’Neil and The Summer Guest, have sold “Probably about 74,000 copies combined.” That’s not bad for non-genre fiction, and his prizes indicated he was good for more, but it’s certainly not enough to pay for a college education when the nine-year-old grows up.

Cronin and his agent submitted the partial manuscript for The Passage under the pseudonym “Jordan Ainsley.” Back in 2007, the New York Times reported that “When the author’s identity was revealed to [winning bidder] Libby McGuire, Ballantine’s publisher, she said that the company would publish the book under Mr. Cronin’s name.” Which implies there was at least a possibility that the company could have chosen differently, and kept his name and perhaps his identity in darkness. If so, would that have protected Cronin from the taint of “Ainsley’s” genre work? Or protected “Ainsley” from the taint of Cronin’s midlist sales?

Cronin’s agent said in 2007: “We weren’t trying to hide who he was, but I didn’t want him to be typecast as one kind of author, and I thought this had vast commercial potential”—apparently lacking in the “one kind of author” Cronin already was.

In his Globe interview, Cronin characterizes the pseudonym in a more literary way:

I wanted to create an environment in which all categories were banished, so the editor wouldn’t know who the manuscript was from, or even if it was written by a man or a woman. I didn’t want them to think of the book with any predetermined qualities attached.

Beam queried if that was really a sneaky tactic, and Cronin replied, “If I was a good career tactician, I wouldn’t be a writer to begin with.”

Three Degrees of Maginel Wright Enright

I knew before reading it on Jacket Knack that illustrator Maginel Wright Enright was the sister of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. But I didn’t recall that she was the mother of author Elizabeth Enright.

Maginel Wright Enright illustrated Twinkle and Chubbins, L. Frank Baum’s pseudonymous fantasy for younger and brain-damaged children. (Can you tell I don’t think much of the book?)

Jacket Knack shows more of Enright’s work, as well as that of some contemporaries. Among them is Maxfield Parrish, whose first book-illustration job was Baum’s first children’s book, Mother Goose in Prose.

It Was Mary Something, I Think

Ron at Media Bistro's Galley Cat ran a couple of brief items last week about Editorial Departments responding to some author submissions with letters signed by fake names. [Yet another.] In one he wrote:

one reader assures me, sending out rejection letters under false names, in the hopes of avoiding long, tiresome correspondence with would-be writers, really has happened--at at least one company.

Indeed, the use of a business pseudonym for some rejection letters was a policy at the publishing company where I started to work in 1987. Can I recall the fake name now? No, it was supposed to be generic and unmemorable. But if I heard it, I'd immediately remember.

I was told, but can't vouch for, the story that one persistent author kept asking for that non-existent editor so many times that some female Editorial Assistant was drafted to portray her for the length of a phone conversation.

I didn't use the name much, if at all. A few years later we phased out that policy. The volume of slush, especially after some of our titles hit the New York Times bestseller list, eventually forced us to adopt a checklist response to most unsolicited submissions. And I left ten years ago.

I can vouch that:

• Some hopeful authors come to publishing company offices to meet with editors despite having no appointments--or, for that matter, words on paper.
• Some hopeful authors have severe mental difficulties. One caller wanted to write about a friend who he knew was a vampire--he'd seen the man's fangs just as clearly as he'd earlier seen Christ holding a plastic lamb in a meadow.
• These two categories can easily overlap.

L. Frank Baum Writes His Own Contract

Yesterday I discussed L. Frank Baum's many pseudonymous books published with Reilly & Britton in 1906. Those all came under one contract, in which he basically promised to write only for that firm, and it promised to publish no other juvenile authors. Though there were some bumps along the way when Baum thought his sales were too low, he and the firm continued to work together until the end of his life.

The contract itself, published in The Baum Bugle in 1969, reflects Baum's sense of humor. It certainly wasn't written by a lawyer! To show what I mean, we pick up that document already in progress:

Second:- Baum shall deliver to The Reilly & Britton Company on or before November 15, 1905 six complete children's stories of about 4500 words each, written by him under the pen name of "Laura Bancroft," or some female appellation of equally dignified comprehensiveness.

Third:- Baum shall deliver to The Reilly & Britton Co. on or before January 1, 1906 the manuscript of a Novel for Young Folks, the title to be later determined on, but the authorship to be ascribed to Maud Gage Baum, or to "Helen Leslie" or to some other female she, as may be mutually agreed upon.

Fourth:- Baum shall deliver to The Reilly & Britton Co. on or before March 1, 1906 the manuscript of a book for young girls on the style of the Louisa M. Alcott stories, but not so good, the authorship to be ascribed to "Ida May McFarland," or to "Ethel Lynne," or some other mythological female

Fifth:- Baum shall deliver to The Reilly & Britton Co. on or before April 15, 1906 the complete manuscript of a story of adventure for boys, the authorship to be ascribed the [sic] Capt. Arthur Fitzgerald, or some other mythical male hero. . . .

Tenth:- The Reilly & Britton Co. agrees to promote the sale of each and all of these books to the full extent of whatever ability God has given them, backed by their worldly experience and mature judgement, and not to shy at any idea of further increasing such sales that may at any time enlighten their minds.

Eleventh:- The Reilly & Britton Co. further agrees that in case said Baum shall at any time become hard up to provide for him upon demand any sum or sums of money that he may wish to squander that will not total more than two thousand dollars, although they hope it will be less, and to deduct such sums from said Baum's accrued royalties on the next day of payment following, as above provided for. . . .

In witness whereof the undersigned parties to this agreement, being sane in their own estimation, well fed and not under the influence of any intoxicating beverages, do subscribe their names in the presence of witnesses.

I've seen hundreds of publishing contracts, and none is as readable as this one. However, a prohibition on signing agreements "under the influence of any intoxicating beverages" would have brought the mid-20th-century publishing industry to a standstill.

The Pseudonymous Bugle

In 1906, the Reilly & Britton Company, a publisher founded only two years before, announced a list of fiction by Laura Bancroft, Capt. Hugh Fitzgerald, Suzanne Metcalf, Schuyler Staunton, and Edith Van Dyne, as well as John Dough and the Cherub by the firm's star, L. Frank Baum.

The secret behind that output? All those authors actually were Baum, writing under pseudonyms so as to attract different audiences and avoid competing with himself. "Bancroft" wrote fantasy fiction for young children. "Fitzgerald" and "Staunton" wrote foreign adventures for teenaged boys and men. "Metcalf" and "Van Dyne" wrote novels for teenaged girls.

Of the batch, the books credited to Edith Van Dyne were the most successful. The Aunt Jane's Nieces series reportedly came second only to Baum's Oz books in sales during his lifetime. The later Mary Louise series from Van Dyne was strong enough for the publisher to commission more titles from Emma Speed Sampson after Baum's death.

The latest issue of the International Wizard of Oz Club's Baum Bugle examines that pseudonymous work with three thorough and well-illustrated dissections of three series that began in 1906, plus period reviews and bibliographical examinations. The articles are:

• Angelica Carpenter's comparison of Baum's Aunt Jane's Nieces with Carolyn Well's competing Patty books for girls. One observation: Baum never offered the elaborate detail on clothing usually found in this genre.
• H. Alan Pickrell's discussion of the series published as both Sam Steele's Adventures and The Boy Fortune Hunters. In a 1999 review, I wrote, "These books show us how special Baum’s fairylands are. Sam Steele’s sagas were cooked up from many of the same ingredients as the Oz books, but stewed in greed, suspicion, and insistence on white American male superiority." And precisely because of that contrast, I find them valuable for Oz fans to read.
• Sean P. Duffley's analysis of Annabel, the worst performer of the bunch. Apparently that novel was supposed to appeal to teenagers of both sexes, but it appears to have never quite come together. The story, which Sean notes closely follows the model created by Horatio Alger, focused on a hard-working young man. But the packaging and marketing emphasized the bland title character.

As the issue notes, for a long time children's books weren't seen as worthwhile objects of study. Then the academy began to accept that sort of literature, but still saw series books as beneath regard. Then enduringly popular series like the Oz books gained some respect. As these articles show, we can also learn a lot from forgotten popular literature, even unsuccessful examples of it.

This issue of the Bugle also contains reviews of new Oz books and DVDs.

TOMORROW: Baum's funniest writing from 1905-06.

Looking for the Great American Superhero Novel

A few days ago, toward the start of NON-COMICS WEEK, I posited that the increasing respect for comics in our culture has opened the door for "literary" novels about comics creators, both children and adults. Another, less high-falutin' result of the same trend is more prose novels about superheroes. Not just characters with special powers, like Harry Potter, but characters whose fantastic powers and worlds are based on American superhero traditions.

In American literary publishing for adults, we have Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude (2003) as the most prominent example. For kids, the trend seems to be largely confined to mass-market series, such as Dan Greenburg's Maximum Boy and Greg Trine's Melvin Beederman, Superhero.

Which brings me to William Boniface's Extraordinary Adventures of Ordinary Boy series, starting with The Hero Revealed. Boniface is actually Jon Anderson, who worked at Penguin and now heads Running Press. He comes by his superhero knowledge honestly: he was once buyer of graphic novels for Barnes & Noble.

For more background, see this video interview at First Book. And according to an interview with Anderson's hometown paper, the Argus Leader:

"Ordinary Boy" was written during a four-month period when Anderson devoted himself to his story full time. He sold the manuscript to the first publishing house he approached. But the whole process screeched to a halt with the arrival of a movie about another superhero family. "'The Incredibles' has been haunting me," Anderson says.

In spite of being written nearly two years before "The Incredibles" took center stage, HarperCollins decided to delay the release of "Ordinary Boy" so as not to appear to be riding the coattails of the hit animated movie. Even now, as Ordinary Boy takes his turn in the spotlight, "Incredibles" comparisons persist.

(That article is no longer on the Argus Leader website; I pulled it from a Google cache.)

That worry about "riding the coattails" seems to be missing the point of all of today's superhero books, movies (e.g., Sky High), and TV shows (e.g., Heroes), not to mention the current state of superhero comics publishing. It's all self-referential. Everyone is chasing each other's coattails. Readers are expected to spot cross-references and allusions. So let's hear no more about the genre being derivative; that's the point.

The Hero Revealed exemplifies a number of trends in recent superhero novels for kids. It takes place in a world with a plethora, a veritable surfeit, of superpowered criminals and crime-stoppers; these books tend to be inspired by the DC and Marvel "universes" rather than individual hero legends. The protagonist is a growing member of that society; in The Hero Revealed, Ordinary Boy is special because he doesn't appear to have any powers.

The genre emphasizes comedy, finding it in the awkward disadvantages of superpowers. These books usually have a lot of illustrations in an energetic, humorous style. The Ordinary Boy series is part of the subcategory--maybe half of the genre--that plays off the marketing of superheroes to kids.

The Hero Revealed is on the long side--almost 300 pages. But it's not terribly tight. On pages 132-3, for instance, OB spends five paragraphs reviewing the mystery and his feelings about it for us readers. And then he tells his parents exactly the same things in one big paragraph on page 134.

The book starts slowly, with 30 pages before "an enormous muffled explosion" inaugurates something like a plot. Up to then, Boniface has simply filled us in on Superopolis society with a maps, trading card-like character profiles, and backstory. It's possible to be too self-referential.

One big, old-fashioned flaw in this book, not shared by all others in the genre: as in the earliest versions of Superfriends, each group has a token female. The main crime-fighting organization, the League of Ultimate Goodness, includes one woman, and her sole job is to make the leader feel good about himself. (I'm not making that up.) Does Ordinary Boy's club do any better? No, they, too, have only one female member.

TOMORROW: A superhero novel from a female point of view.

(Publishers who are looking to get into the superhero novel genre should ask Greg Fishbone for a look at his How to Be a Superhero manuscript.)