2001-01-26
It has been very cool to receive all your responses to my little survey on
the proposed book title GIRLS WHO PINE. The consensus, with a small number of enthusiastic
exceptions, was not very favorable. More important than whether the title is likable is whether it is apt, and your comments helped me realize that one is not.
One problem is that the word pine has such strong connotations of romance. The dictionary definition is actually quite a bit broader:
- To feel a lingering, often nostalgic desire.
- To wither or waste away from longing or grief: pined away and died.
But most I heard from inferred that this book would be about women pining for men. While there is some of that, GIRLS WHO PINE emphasizes the very thing I tried to de-emphasize in the story and masks what I think sets the book apart from the many books out there about women pining for men.
At the center of the book is the friendship between two women and this survey exercise made me realize my title should reflect that. I know that seems crashingly obvious but it had managed to escape me. So, thanks again to those of you who participated; your candor was invaluable.
Amazingly enough, yesterday afternoon while I wasn't even trying to think of a title, one spontaneously came to me. I immediately called my friend and left a brief message. My phone rang a couple of hours later and without even a hello, she said, "I like it." I'm not quite ready to share it; I want to live with it a bit.
Meanwhile, as I mentioned to many of you who wrote, this title thing is really not of massive importance overall. The title is ultimately a decision the marketing department makes; contracts almost always refer to "the work tentatively titled XXXXXX" because the house retains the right to change it.
Regardless of who comes up with them, I wonder how much titles matter. A good title can help, certainly, but some of the great titles seem great because they are attatched to works we know have been successful; they take on an inevitability.
Speaking of titles, yesterday I read the obituary of Candida Donadio, a literary agent who represented some of the biggies, among them Joseph Heller. CATCH-22 was originally titled CATCH-18 but another book with "18" in it had come out around that same time, so they switched it. (Ms. Donadio's birthday was the 22nd of some month or other.) Now you can look in any dictionary and find Catch-22.
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