The log I am keeping of my efforts to let people who might be interested know about Where the HeArt is is impressively long. However, many of the items are to record contacts I have made that have not, so far, produced any results. I am told, on some of the how-to-sell-your ebook sites I look at, that a slow build is the most likely scenario. Others suggest all sort of things to do, such as emailing your entire address list several times over a couple of weeks, which I regard as spamming and have no intention of doing.
If you look at the top right corner of this blog you will see the cover of Where the HeArt is and links to Smashwords and Kindle below it. These will remain at that spot on the screen regardless of what else I post, and I just checked both those links and they work. (In case they don’t work for you, googling my name or the book title will find them.)
Any day now, I’ll do a blog entry about what I’m reading.
February 24, 2012
February 12, 2012
Self-publishing my novel as an ebook (4) Details details details
Getting to grips with the marketing thing means letting people know the book is available, how to get it, and encouraging them to buy and read it. I tend to focus on the first two, and have a ‘handout’ in both electronic and printout form that I am distributing. Here it is:
Where the HeArt is by Pat Rosier
Published: Jan. 22, 2012 Price: 4.95USD
Blurb
Will travel fix Ann's broken life? Suddenly bereft of both partner and job, Ann needs to find a new direction. Connecting frayed threads of family and finding herself in what she calls "art events" in America is rewarding, but no preparation for the totally unexpected—in more ways than one—things that happen in London. Ann returns home to New Zealand both shaken and stirred.
Extended description
It was her mother's idea that forty-year-old Ann should go traveling. Ann's parter has walked out and she's been made redundant from a university job she enjoys, teaching the Romantic poets. She can combine her love of art museums with visits to family members in Washington DC, New York and London, mending frayed connections. A final few family-free days in Paris will round off her trip. Travel will give her a break from well-meaning advice and a chance to think about future directions for her fractured life. After all, she has a willing father to take care of the sale of her once-shared house, and the dog was always more her partner's.
Unexpected "art events" begin in New York, where her experience of the art works she admires take on a whole new dimension. In London, Ann finds that her cousin's competent wife could actually use some help with two-year-old twins, so she extends her stay and her knowledge of young children. A decidedly non-familial encounter with a dynamic librarian in London and an impetuous mistake in Paris mean that Ann returns to New Zealand and her future both shaken and stirred.
For sale for 4.95 US Dollars as an ebook on both the smashwords site and the kindle site. The URLs are:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/125647
This is the Smashwords site, where you can get versions for all different kinds of readers, (including Kindle) including a pdf for your computer if you want. One purchase gets all versions.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0073O5DVC
This is the Kindle site itself. You can buy it here, but only the Kindle version.
I’m keeping a log of what I am doing to get the news out about the book, both to avoid repeating myself and for future reference should I do this again. I trawl around the internet looking for likely places to announce it. Each place I approach, usually by email, wants something different and has a different way of doing things. It can take a LOT of time with, I suspect, little return.
I have discovered that (in New Zealand) you can get ISBN numbers for self-published ebooks from the National Library, just as you do for print books. They issued me with separate numbers for pdf, mobi and epub versions. It costs nothing and makes books findable. They also operate legal deposit for ebooks, so have sent mine in.
Nielson book data is another place to make books findable, and I am awaiting a reply from them regarding whether they list ebooks.
I’m not writing anything new while all this is filling my mind.
Where the HeArt is by Pat Rosier
Published: Jan. 22, 2012 Price: 4.95USD
Blurb
Will travel fix Ann's broken life? Suddenly bereft of both partner and job, Ann needs to find a new direction. Connecting frayed threads of family and finding herself in what she calls "art events" in America is rewarding, but no preparation for the totally unexpected—in more ways than one—things that happen in London. Ann returns home to New Zealand both shaken and stirred.
Extended description
It was her mother's idea that forty-year-old Ann should go traveling. Ann's parter has walked out and she's been made redundant from a university job she enjoys, teaching the Romantic poets. She can combine her love of art museums with visits to family members in Washington DC, New York and London, mending frayed connections. A final few family-free days in Paris will round off her trip. Travel will give her a break from well-meaning advice and a chance to think about future directions for her fractured life. After all, she has a willing father to take care of the sale of her once-shared house, and the dog was always more her partner's.
Unexpected "art events" begin in New York, where her experience of the art works she admires take on a whole new dimension. In London, Ann finds that her cousin's competent wife could actually use some help with two-year-old twins, so she extends her stay and her knowledge of young children. A decidedly non-familial encounter with a dynamic librarian in London and an impetuous mistake in Paris mean that Ann returns to New Zealand and her future both shaken and stirred.
For sale for 4.95 US Dollars as an ebook on both the smashwords site and the kindle site. The URLs are:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/125647
This is the Smashwords site, where you can get versions for all different kinds of readers, (including Kindle) including a pdf for your computer if you want. One purchase gets all versions.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0073O5DVC
This is the Kindle site itself. You can buy it here, but only the Kindle version.
I’m keeping a log of what I am doing to get the news out about the book, both to avoid repeating myself and for future reference should I do this again. I trawl around the internet looking for likely places to announce it. Each place I approach, usually by email, wants something different and has a different way of doing things. It can take a LOT of time with, I suspect, little return.
I have discovered that (in New Zealand) you can get ISBN numbers for self-published ebooks from the National Library, just as you do for print books. They issued me with separate numbers for pdf, mobi and epub versions. It costs nothing and makes books findable. They also operate legal deposit for ebooks, so have sent mine in.
Nielson book data is another place to make books findable, and I am awaiting a reply from them regarding whether they list ebooks.
I’m not writing anything new while all this is filling my mind.
February 2, 2012
Self-publishing my novel as an ebook (3) It’s Done!
It's done. Now you can buy my ebook Where the HeArt is from Smashwords:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/125647 Or just go to smashwords.com and search on either my name or the book title.
You can get the KIndle version from the Smashwords site, or go to http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0073O5DVC
to buy it from the Kindle store (4.95USD).
One advantage of buying it from Smashwords is that you can, with one purchase (4.95USD) download a whole range of versions for different ereaders. For example, you can download a Kindle version and an ibooks (epub) version for your ipad. And a pdf version for your computer. And so on.
Here’s the blurb:
Will travel fix Ann’s broken life? Suddenly bereft of both partner and job, Ann needs to find a new direction. Connecting with frayed threads of family and finding herself in what she calls “art events” in the United States is rewarding, but no preparation for the totally unexpected—in more ways than one—things that happen in London. Ann returns to New Zealand both shaken and stirred.
Where the HeArt is will also be available soon from ebook retailers like the apple store and Barnes and Noble in the UK and all the major ebook retailers and distributors except Amazon (hence the separate Kindle version). This is a distribution service provided (free to authors) by Smashwords and is one of the reasons for using them.
Now I need to let potential readers know Where the HeArt is is out there. This is the worst bit for me. This blog will link to facebook, so that's covered. I’ll blog about the whole promotion thing from time to time. I read on sites like Goodreads that lots of self-publishers find this part the hardest, it’s not just me.
If you read my book and want to be helpful, a good way is to make a comment about it (often called a “review” but it isn’t really), or a rating, on the website you bought it from. Or anywhere else, for that matter. (I sit and stare at this paragraph, wanting to delete it—what a nerve, asking readers to promote my book, I think. I suppose it could be seen as a variation of the venerable “word of mouth.” Maybe it’s the asking that seems wrong.)
I’ve checked out the look of it, as far as I can with the resources I have, in various the formats for various ebooks, and it seems to be working all right. If anyone gets a version with something awful, like squashed headings or links that don’t work, please let me know. (If you don’t have an email address for me, leave a comment on this blog.)
So here we go, off into the ebook ether.
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/125647 Or just go to smashwords.com and search on either my name or the book title.
You can get the KIndle version from the Smashwords site, or go to http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0073O5DVC
to buy it from the Kindle store (4.95USD).
One advantage of buying it from Smashwords is that you can, with one purchase (4.95USD) download a whole range of versions for different ereaders. For example, you can download a Kindle version and an ibooks (epub) version for your ipad. And a pdf version for your computer. And so on.
Here’s the blurb:
Will travel fix Ann’s broken life? Suddenly bereft of both partner and job, Ann needs to find a new direction. Connecting with frayed threads of family and finding herself in what she calls “art events” in the United States is rewarding, but no preparation for the totally unexpected—in more ways than one—things that happen in London. Ann returns to New Zealand both shaken and stirred.
Where the HeArt is will also be available soon from ebook retailers like the apple store and Barnes and Noble in the UK and all the major ebook retailers and distributors except Amazon (hence the separate Kindle version). This is a distribution service provided (free to authors) by Smashwords and is one of the reasons for using them.
Now I need to let potential readers know Where the HeArt is is out there. This is the worst bit for me. This blog will link to facebook, so that's covered. I’ll blog about the whole promotion thing from time to time. I read on sites like Goodreads that lots of self-publishers find this part the hardest, it’s not just me.
If you read my book and want to be helpful, a good way is to make a comment about it (often called a “review” but it isn’t really), or a rating, on the website you bought it from. Or anywhere else, for that matter. (I sit and stare at this paragraph, wanting to delete it—what a nerve, asking readers to promote my book, I think. I suppose it could be seen as a variation of the venerable “word of mouth.” Maybe it’s the asking that seems wrong.)
I’ve checked out the look of it, as far as I can with the resources I have, in various the formats for various ebooks, and it seems to be working all right. If anyone gets a version with something awful, like squashed headings or links that don’t work, please let me know. (If you don’t have an email address for me, leave a comment on this blog.)
So here we go, off into the ebook ether.
January 28, 2012
Reading Infinite Jest
One way I had thought of describing Infinite Jest is as a long scream with funny bits. It’s an evisceration of Amarican-style, commercial, pleasure-based culture where there is so much choice that choice is meaningless, in a USA where people are over-entertained and sad and bored and lonely. Especially lonely.
I set out to read IJ as a challenge to myself. I read some reviews and comments on it and every one said it was difficult. It's certainly long, at over 1000 pages if you include the 388 footnotes (yes, it is a novel) that are invariably referred to by reviewers.
There's a LOT of detail, whether it's the description of a room, or a person, or the person's state of being, or the drugs they use, or the tennis academy that is one of the locations of the story, or the workings of AA or whatever. The plot is not-quite-hidden in the details, and I'm not sure I could say exactly what the main plot is.
Infinite Jest was first published in 1996 and its setting is the 2000s, so there's an element of futurist technology. One device key to the story is something like what we know as a DVD, and there is a particular one of these around that has such a high entertainment quotient (not DFW's word) that once a person starts watching it they cannot stop. One plot line is to do with various agencies seeking to find and destroy the master copy of this Entertainment, which of course can't be watched by anyone wanting to destroy it. Such pleasure is fatal! Which creates funny and gruesome and fascinating scenarios.
Protagonist Hal Incandenza is a teenage tennis star at an invented academy. The training regime is horrendous. And, as with most of the contents of this book, it provides a context for exploring a whole range of ideas about society and power and success and so on. Including loneliness. The man who created The Entertainment was a film-maker (he's committed suicide before the book begins) and Hal's father. The mother of Hal and his two brothers is a really creepy character who is so nice and considerate and outright good, she gave me what DFW calls in a couple of places the "howling fantods."
Across the road from the tennis academy is the house for people getting off drugs. That's where another protagonist, Don Gately, is. A main source of treatment is going to AA meetings, and IJ includes an exhaustive level of detail about these meetings. "Yes, of course 'one day at a time' and such are clichés, but, hey, they work."
There are a myriad more characters, themes and story threads, such as the Concavity—a huge area encompassing Vermont and part of Quebec where no-one lives and the trash from the northeastern cities is catapulted to. The various plots and characters are carried along on an accretion of details.
The writing is extraordinary. I still haven't figured out why some sentences start with 'And but so...', or variations of that. It's not possible to ask, because DFW himself committed suicide in 2006. There are plenty of clips of him speaking on YouTube and masses of articles about him online, but I haven't found one that asks why he started sentences like that.
So much more could be said about Infinite Jest, and has been—try googling it. My conclusion is that in the end it is maybe a plea for doing our best to live in an actual, present world, and never mind an imagined (remembering is imagined) past or future. Or something. Anyway, I found it utterly worthwhile to make the effort and persist through what were almost boring bits, and excruciating descriptions of coming off drugs.
I set out to read IJ as a challenge to myself. I read some reviews and comments on it and every one said it was difficult. It's certainly long, at over 1000 pages if you include the 388 footnotes (yes, it is a novel) that are invariably referred to by reviewers.
There's a LOT of detail, whether it's the description of a room, or a person, or the person's state of being, or the drugs they use, or the tennis academy that is one of the locations of the story, or the workings of AA or whatever. The plot is not-quite-hidden in the details, and I'm not sure I could say exactly what the main plot is.
Infinite Jest was first published in 1996 and its setting is the 2000s, so there's an element of futurist technology. One device key to the story is something like what we know as a DVD, and there is a particular one of these around that has such a high entertainment quotient (not DFW's word) that once a person starts watching it they cannot stop. One plot line is to do with various agencies seeking to find and destroy the master copy of this Entertainment, which of course can't be watched by anyone wanting to destroy it. Such pleasure is fatal! Which creates funny and gruesome and fascinating scenarios.
Protagonist Hal Incandenza is a teenage tennis star at an invented academy. The training regime is horrendous. And, as with most of the contents of this book, it provides a context for exploring a whole range of ideas about society and power and success and so on. Including loneliness. The man who created The Entertainment was a film-maker (he's committed suicide before the book begins) and Hal's father. The mother of Hal and his two brothers is a really creepy character who is so nice and considerate and outright good, she gave me what DFW calls in a couple of places the "howling fantods."
Across the road from the tennis academy is the house for people getting off drugs. That's where another protagonist, Don Gately, is. A main source of treatment is going to AA meetings, and IJ includes an exhaustive level of detail about these meetings. "Yes, of course 'one day at a time' and such are clichés, but, hey, they work."
There are a myriad more characters, themes and story threads, such as the Concavity—a huge area encompassing Vermont and part of Quebec where no-one lives and the trash from the northeastern cities is catapulted to. The various plots and characters are carried along on an accretion of details.
The writing is extraordinary. I still haven't figured out why some sentences start with 'And but so...', or variations of that. It's not possible to ask, because DFW himself committed suicide in 2006. There are plenty of clips of him speaking on YouTube and masses of articles about him online, but I haven't found one that asks why he started sentences like that.
So much more could be said about Infinite Jest, and has been—try googling it. My conclusion is that in the end it is maybe a plea for doing our best to live in an actual, present world, and never mind an imagined (remembering is imagined) past or future. Or something. Anyway, I found it utterly worthwhile to make the effort and persist through what were almost boring bits, and excruciating descriptions of coming off drugs.
January 22, 2012
Self-publishing my novel as an ebook (2): Nearly There
I have done the formatting for Smashwords (http://www.smashwords.com) . I have created a cover (much better than the earlier one I included in a blog post of 12 November 2011). Thanks to Jill H. who helped me put together the earlier cover, I knew just enough to add the text for the title and my name as author to a photograph of my own to make this cover. A blurb is written and tags—maximum of ten—sorted.
The process for getting the US tax exemption number I mentioned in my last post is not completed and involves a lot of waiting, so I’ve decided to go ahead without it.
Because Smashwords does not yet distribute to Amazon for the Kindle store, athough I gather they are working on that, I am looking into putting it there myself, but that needs more research. As far as I can tell, people with a Kindle will be able to buy the book from the Smashwords site, but there are sometimes problems with the way it turns out. If I can get this to work, I’ll include instructions in my next post.
So, tomorrow morning, I’ll upload to Smashwords. Their process takes about a week at the moment. They vet the book, but only for technical issues, they don’t assess or edit the content. Watch this space, I’ll let you know when it’s up at the Smashwords site. The price will be $4.95 USD from there. If you buy Where the HeArt is from Smashwords you can download it in any of the main ebook formats—epub, mobi, Palm Doc, PDF and so on, or all of them if you want. They also distribute to ebook retailers (except, so far, Amazon/Kindle).
The process for getting the US tax exemption number I mentioned in my last post is not completed and involves a lot of waiting, so I’ve decided to go ahead without it.
Because Smashwords does not yet distribute to Amazon for the Kindle store, athough I gather they are working on that, I am looking into putting it there myself, but that needs more research. As far as I can tell, people with a Kindle will be able to buy the book from the Smashwords site, but there are sometimes problems with the way it turns out. If I can get this to work, I’ll include instructions in my next post.
So, tomorrow morning, I’ll upload to Smashwords. Their process takes about a week at the moment. They vet the book, but only for technical issues, they don’t assess or edit the content. Watch this space, I’ll let you know when it’s up at the Smashwords site. The price will be $4.95 USD from there. If you buy Where the HeArt is from Smashwords you can download it in any of the main ebook formats—epub, mobi, Palm Doc, PDF and so on, or all of them if you want. They also distribute to ebook retailers (except, so far, Amazon/Kindle).
January 6, 2012
Self-publishing my novel as an ebook (1)
My recently-completed novel, Where the HeArt Is, having been turned down by all the New Zealand publishers I cared to submit it to, I think self-publishing. I self-published Take It Easy, a earlier novel as a print book and managed the process well, except for the dreaded self-promotion and marketing. At which I was a failure.
The advantages of publishing as an ebook, once you have an edited, proofread manuscript, as I see it, are:
1. Little or no upfront costs (depending on whether you do your own cover, layout and so on.)
2. Riding the wave (well, there are a lot of people saying there is one) of sales for ebook readers.
3. There are some online promotional options that seem to be accessible to individual authors. Some of these I can contemplate doing, others I can’t. (More on this is a later post.)
There are a lot of people writing on the web saying how easy it is to publish an ebook. Don’t be fooled. To do a proper job you have to do a lot of work. I’ve been cruising (as it were!) the web for some months now, gathering information about how to epublish and how to sell ebooks, some of it contradictory, some downright offensive (like spamming your friends), some useful.
I’m sure there will soon be, and probably are already, people who will do all this for an author, epublishing agents/ publishers if you like, for a fee or a percentage. I am not interested in a new career, but I do want to figure out how to do my own book/s, producing a quality book for all the major ereaders. (Amazon/Kindle has to be done separately, in usual Amazon restrictive style.)
(For a touch of visual interest, this is where I do most of my writing.)
I plan to use the aggregator (a way of distributing to all the main ebook sellers, except Amazon) Smashwords. I’ll write more about Smashwords in a later blog, but it’s worth checking out the author sections of their website at http://smashwords. com
Some not-so-obvious things I have discovered:
1. The US Inland Revenue Service (IRS) will take 30% of your earnings on US sales unless you jump through a whole bunch of hoops to get an IRS exemption number. Which you can do from New Zealand. I have a notarised copy of my passport from the US embassy in Auckland (no other sort will do) and am waiting for a letter (an email won’t do) from Smashwords so I can submit (by snail mail) an application to the IRS. I got the “how to” for this from Roz Morris’s blog, “Nail Your Novel” at https://nailyournovel.wordpress.com I am extremely grateful to Roz Morris for this information.
2. To get a good-looking ebook that is a pleasure to read on an ereading device it has to be formatted to very specific instructions. I am familiar with the Smashwords ones, for which you can get a free-to-download pdf from their webiste. Search for Style Guide on their website.
3. People who write about epublishing on the web write with authority, as though their information is accurate, sensible and up-to-date. Sometimes it is. You have to find websites etc with information you trust. This takes time, and is not as simple as me putting in here a list of ones I like: finding the ones that work for you is part of figuring out how to do this thing.
Maybe I am making more of a meal of this than is necessary. If that is the case, so be it. I’m kind of enjoying the trip.
This is number 1 of a series!
The advantages of publishing as an ebook, once you have an edited, proofread manuscript, as I see it, are:
1. Little or no upfront costs (depending on whether you do your own cover, layout and so on.)
2. Riding the wave (well, there are a lot of people saying there is one) of sales for ebook readers.
3. There are some online promotional options that seem to be accessible to individual authors. Some of these I can contemplate doing, others I can’t. (More on this is a later post.)
There are a lot of people writing on the web saying how easy it is to publish an ebook. Don’t be fooled. To do a proper job you have to do a lot of work. I’ve been cruising (as it were!) the web for some months now, gathering information about how to epublish and how to sell ebooks, some of it contradictory, some downright offensive (like spamming your friends), some useful.
I’m sure there will soon be, and probably are already, people who will do all this for an author, epublishing agents/ publishers if you like, for a fee or a percentage. I am not interested in a new career, but I do want to figure out how to do my own book/s, producing a quality book for all the major ereaders. (Amazon/Kindle has to be done separately, in usual Amazon restrictive style.)
(For a touch of visual interest, this is where I do most of my writing.)
I plan to use the aggregator (a way of distributing to all the main ebook sellers, except Amazon) Smashwords. I’ll write more about Smashwords in a later blog, but it’s worth checking out the author sections of their website at http://smashwords. com
Some not-so-obvious things I have discovered:
1. The US Inland Revenue Service (IRS) will take 30% of your earnings on US sales unless you jump through a whole bunch of hoops to get an IRS exemption number. Which you can do from New Zealand. I have a notarised copy of my passport from the US embassy in Auckland (no other sort will do) and am waiting for a letter (an email won’t do) from Smashwords so I can submit (by snail mail) an application to the IRS. I got the “how to” for this from Roz Morris’s blog, “Nail Your Novel” at https://nailyournovel.wordpress.com I am extremely grateful to Roz Morris for this information.
2. To get a good-looking ebook that is a pleasure to read on an ereading device it has to be formatted to very specific instructions. I am familiar with the Smashwords ones, for which you can get a free-to-download pdf from their webiste. Search for Style Guide on their website.
3. People who write about epublishing on the web write with authority, as though their information is accurate, sensible and up-to-date. Sometimes it is. You have to find websites etc with information you trust. This takes time, and is not as simple as me putting in here a list of ones I like: finding the ones that work for you is part of figuring out how to do this thing.
Maybe I am making more of a meal of this than is necessary. If that is the case, so be it. I’m kind of enjoying the trip.
This is number 1 of a series!
December 21, 2011
On Reading David Foster Wallace (&Terry Pratchett)
I don’t remember where I read references to DFW that made me want to read him. Two volumes—A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and Consider The Lobster—of his essay-type pieces later, I was glad I found him. He portrays his disgust (lobsters) and despair at what people do (that supposedly fun thing, going on a cruise) through accumulating detail and a particular way of writing from inside his consciousness. I like both, and imagine a lot of people don’t.
He uses some odd sentence constructions, like starting a sentence with “And but so…” which, until I got used to it, had me re-reading several times. He also uses some very long sentences.
In the short story collection, Oblivion, the consciousness he writes from inside of is his characters’, not overtly his own. This has a strangely bleak effect (affect?). In “Another Pioneer” the narrator is reporting a conversation he partially overheard on a United Airlines flight in patches of great detail. DFW does this a lot, gives great detail and then not much information—it’s hard to explain.
He seems to have a yen to convey boredom, presumably without being boring. He certainly doesn’t bore me. I’m sure my own interest in conveying everyday boredom arises from my experience of it as a child and young person. (I have seldom been bored in the last few decades.) The story “Mister Squishy” is wonderfully evocative of at least two sorts of boredom, one of being in a group being talked at, the other of presenting too-familiar material.
In “Good Old Neon” (which begins, “My whole life I’ve been a fraud.”) the narrator describes thinking about himself thinking about thinking. (I’m avoiding the phrase “stream of consciousness” because it seems to me what DFW is doing is different from that, but I can’t say how.) And this—thinking about himself thinking about thinking—reminds me, oddly, of Terry Pratchett’s The Wee Free Men, which I have just finished. In The Wee Free Men the protagonist, Tiffany, refers to her own ability to have first, second and third thoughts. The context and circumstances are where she is trying to hold on to her own, real, self in the face of a Queen who wants to put her in various dream spaces (yes, The Wee Free Men is one of 30+ books set in Pratchett’s fanstasy land, Discworld). Whereas DRW is concerned with solispsism, Tiffany is looking outwards by looking inwards. Or something. Anyway, one reminded me of the other.
Another thing DFW does with sentences is now and then make an ungrammatical statement, like, “The next time or next thing I wanted.” These sentences are placed, carefully, I suspect, as a kind of summary—or extension—of what precedes them.
The phrase “the loneliness of solipsism” comes into my mind as I write and I am not sure whether is it my phrase or one I came across reading about DFW before I started to read him. This in itself was unusual for me, I generally prefer to read an author before I look at others’ opinions, but I had accidentally come across descriptions of his writing as “difficult,” “challenging,” and so on, so decided some preparation was in order.
When I finish the short stories, it’s on to his novel, Infinite Jest. A novel with 388 footnotes. Did I mention DFW excels at asides?
He uses some odd sentence constructions, like starting a sentence with “And but so…” which, until I got used to it, had me re-reading several times. He also uses some very long sentences.
In the short story collection, Oblivion, the consciousness he writes from inside of is his characters’, not overtly his own. This has a strangely bleak effect (affect?). In “Another Pioneer” the narrator is reporting a conversation he partially overheard on a United Airlines flight in patches of great detail. DFW does this a lot, gives great detail and then not much information—it’s hard to explain.
He seems to have a yen to convey boredom, presumably without being boring. He certainly doesn’t bore me. I’m sure my own interest in conveying everyday boredom arises from my experience of it as a child and young person. (I have seldom been bored in the last few decades.) The story “Mister Squishy” is wonderfully evocative of at least two sorts of boredom, one of being in a group being talked at, the other of presenting too-familiar material.
In “Good Old Neon” (which begins, “My whole life I’ve been a fraud.”) the narrator describes thinking about himself thinking about thinking. (I’m avoiding the phrase “stream of consciousness” because it seems to me what DFW is doing is different from that, but I can’t say how.) And this—thinking about himself thinking about thinking—reminds me, oddly, of Terry Pratchett’s The Wee Free Men, which I have just finished. In The Wee Free Men the protagonist, Tiffany, refers to her own ability to have first, second and third thoughts. The context and circumstances are where she is trying to hold on to her own, real, self in the face of a Queen who wants to put her in various dream spaces (yes, The Wee Free Men is one of 30+ books set in Pratchett’s fanstasy land, Discworld). Whereas DRW is concerned with solispsism, Tiffany is looking outwards by looking inwards. Or something. Anyway, one reminded me of the other.
Another thing DFW does with sentences is now and then make an ungrammatical statement, like, “The next time or next thing I wanted.” These sentences are placed, carefully, I suspect, as a kind of summary—or extension—of what precedes them.
The phrase “the loneliness of solipsism” comes into my mind as I write and I am not sure whether is it my phrase or one I came across reading about DFW before I started to read him. This in itself was unusual for me, I generally prefer to read an author before I look at others’ opinions, but I had accidentally come across descriptions of his writing as “difficult,” “challenging,” and so on, so decided some preparation was in order.
When I finish the short stories, it’s on to his novel, Infinite Jest. A novel with 388 footnotes. Did I mention DFW excels at asides?
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