Posted on 08/19/2015 6:47:49 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
I wrote the first draft of this novel circa 1976 when I was living on West 105th Street in Manhattan. The original title was Crucial Moments. Somehow I got Joe Fox, a huge name at Random House, to look at the opening chapters. He actually called me up to say: not for him. (Imagine this big shot talking to a nobody. Clearly, it was another age.)
Probably I did another two or three edits and in 1992 I showed it to an agent. She said: I love it. She took me on as a writer because of this book and sent the manuscript to Simon & Schuster. They had a meeting and almost bought it.
(I told the agent, don't worry, I have something new that will be easier to sell, Too Easy, which became a Simon & Schuster book in 1994 and is soon to be reissued by S&S as an e-book).
As for The Man Who Falls In Love With His Wife, I probably edited it every few years. The agent was never able to sell it but she always said: I love that book. Enthusiasm helps.
Why did I love it? The most common thing in our culture is that men fall out of love with their wives and leave them. So I was drawn to the counterintuitive story, the contrarian vision.
Feedback from editors would often complain that this or that character was not appealing enough. The tendency over a decade or two was to soften the people. I suspect the the original book was colder and perhaps more literary. Now I believe it’s an unconventional story told in a fairly conventional way.
Two years ago I realized I have a lot of projects that were hidden in files I couldn’t even open up in some cases. I resolved to bring everything up to date, and to put everything in play as much as I could.
As I pitched people about this book, I discovered that I did not know how to pitch it. (My main discovery the past year is that querying is an art form in itself.) I finally decided that as neither an agent nor I seemed able to sell it, this novel would be a good one to test as an e-book (which is the literary world's new frontier). Once the details were finalized, then of course I had an epiphany about what the logline should have been all along: John Franklin thinks he has a perfect marriage…until he looks more closely at it.
The psychologically interesting thing is that the wife has created, with love and charm, a world where she will be safe. She’s a wounded animal and she naturally wants everything to revolve around protecting her. The husband more and more wants to change things, which she resists.
A week after the novel became an e-book, I realized there is a key sentence I could have put in the book if I wanted to spell things out. Somebody would say to Elizabeth Franklin: “You never let go, did you?”
To some people, that might sound like a searing indictment. On the other hand, how many of us ever let go? So it’s really a book that says respectfully: people need love; and people need their defenses.
One thing I liked about Kobo (the e-book site) is they brag about making the book available in more than 100 countries. I write a straightforward, lucid prose that some people might think is not poetic enough. On the other hand, if English is a second language then this book might seem to be written in exquisite English! My fantasy is that I get a fan letter from Mongolia.
In the new e-book era, writers still need to be as concerned as ever about a good cover, which is really a difficult project for most literary people. I was often an art director; so I created a cover from material found on the Internet. I liked the cover so much, it became another force pushing me along the e-book route. [ See cover at Lit4u.com ]
Here is a second fantasy. As I looked back I realized I have written a number of novels where Manhattan is basically the stage for what is basically a Broadway play. QED: these books would be cheap to turn into movies. No chases, no fires, no battles. Instead, you get fifty scenes in restaurants, apartments, and art galleries. It’s fun to think that a bean-counting producer decides, wow, this thing is so cheap, we’d be fools not to produce it.
Everybody gives the same advice, keep fixing, keep pitching. That’s pretty much the only advice I've always tried to follow. I'm pitching now.
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Bruce Deitrick Price is the author of six books, an artist, and a poet. He writes widely about education reform.
She also writes about herself in the third person and is a notorious blog pimp.
Self-publishing is the right thing to do it seems. Gotta love the freedom to compete with the big publishers.
Do you ever comment on articles that you didn’t write?
What are you talking about, humblegunner.
Why did I love it? The most common thing in our culture is that men fall out of love with their wives and leave them. So I was drawn to the counterintuitive story, the contrarian vision.
HOORAY BruceDeitrickPrice.
Change it to “The Man Who Falls in Love with His Husband” and it will sell fast.
Translation:
Bruce, you have much admire yourself and need savor the whip.
You must learned to obey and not so much cry how beautiful you are.
Come into my tent you will be beaten and shut your mouth so proud.
Many boys like you have cried in my tent.
Over the years I’ve written mucho de crapola for my own edification and enjoyment.
Occasionally I read a past effort and think I should do something with it, and sometimes, uh, not so much.
If I had any incentive at all I would go the ebook route, but I don’t.
I probably have just enough to check out your effort. That I will do.
I liked that scene from “Shenandoah” where James Stewart is talking to Doug McClure who wants to marry James’ daughter and how the kid says he loves her and Jimmy said “No, you like my daughter - you will grow to love her” ...
“fan letter from Mongolia.”
That be pretty funny.
Humble, your translation left me in tears ... one of your best blog pimp blasts ever
Bruce, is there a reason you aren’t you selling this on Amazon?
Also, I’ve read through the preview and found a typo:
“She leaned away from him and take off her blouse.” I think you meant “took off” or “to take off.”
Do you still live on West 105th Street? Did you ever see a youthful Columbia undergrad named Barry Soetoro wandering the neighborhood in the early ‘80s?
LOL!!!!
Good points:
I would hate to tell you how long that typo has been there.
The e-book world is confusing. I researched a lot and then said, I have to start somewhere. Kobo is clever in stressing how easy everything will be. That’s not exactly true. You can get lost in the process of doing an e-book. I’m now trying to put a second one on Kindle (and can’t make the cover photo upload?). A third has been acquired by Web-e-Books. And a fourth will end up on the Simon & Schuster site. (More and more, I suspect, everything will be readable on everything.)
I still have several projects that I think should end up as traditional books. The problem is companies take six months to decide, and everything moves glacially. My long-range plan is to put all my projects out in the world, one way or another. This will clear my head and my office. So I can start on new projects. The e-book phenomenon is going to create a lot of confusion and new choices for everyone; for me it’s a welcome option.
(New sites exist to sort out the glut of e-books. See BookBud.)
Moved to West 45th in 1979. Didn’t he arrive just after that? Everyone went to the West End Bar in those days. I’m sure Barry was there...if he was ever in the area at all.
Did you move into Mickey Featherstone’s old room? I think Barry frequented the bars farther down the West Side . . . much farther down.
I looked in the papers and found the cheapest rents in Manhattan were also very centrally located, in the West 40s. I found the Whitby (325W45), which was well run and was a lucky break for me. It was only little by little over the next few years that I realized that I lived in the Wild West. People on the East Side thought I’d lost my mind. Things were a little rough through the 80s but then it started getting gentrified. But really all of Manhattan was the same. You didn’t walk down the street without always knowing what was around you. And artists took the best deal they could find. I loved living in the West 40s because it was almost the center of the world.
If I'm not mistaken, The Whitby was popular with Broadway and TV types at one time. I think the late, great Ivan.T. Sanderson lived there many, mamy years ago. If you've never heard of him, google him!
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