Mr. King, I respectfully disagree
I am an unapologetic reader of Entertainment Weekly. For all the swearing off of magazines I’ve done, there are a few that rise above the crowd to earn my attention. EW is one of those. I find it smart, funny, and a good, quick review of many things important to me: books, movies, tv and music. Sneer if you must, but in this case I’m no snob. I like EW because it embraces popular culture, though whether it’s high, medium or low is anyone’s call.
Stephen King is a columnist for EW. I haven’t read a King novel in many years, but I enjoy his “The Pop of King” and his sense of humor. In April 6, 2007’s “How to Bury a Book,” he accuses publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux of dropping the ball with its treatment of the new novel Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski. King takes issue with the cover and the title. He feels they tell nothing about, and therefore don’t sell, the book. King picked Fieldwork up on impulse, in spite of the cover and title, and was pleasantly surprised. He says that FSG has burdened the book with a smeary image and vague title because they’re afraid to market a literary novel overtly:
Hey, guys, why not put the heroine on the jacket….why not actually sell this baby a little?
I found it interesting that King also took issue with the cover and title of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, also from FSG, because I clearly remember the first time I saw that book in a store. I had to sternly restrain myself from buying Gilead in hardcover. Oh, how I wanted that book. The cover was a lovely wash of bleached-out color. It looked like the door of an old church. That plus the title told me it would be a book about religion and spirituality. I didn’t buy the book, because I managed to adhere to whatever “if I’m not about to read it next I can’t buy it, and I certainly can’t buy it in hardcover because by the time I read it, not only will it be out in paperback, it will probably have gone through a trade paperback printing into a mass market printing and I’ll have spent $25+ on a book that’s harder to read because of its lack of portability, and I’ll long for the lighter weight, and smaller pocketbook dent, of a paperback” vow I had taken at the time. I continued to visit that hardcover on subsequent bookstore trips, even after I borrowed Gilead from the library. I bought it as soon as it came out in trade paperback.
I went to amazon.com to check out Fieldwork after I read King’s column. Based on the description of the book, the cover and King’s endorsement, I would get this book, in spite of the mixed editorial reviews at amazon. (I don’t take the editorial reviews as gospel, and I pretty much ignore the personal reviews–too little signal to noise. But the ed. reviews usually point me in the right direction: check it out/meh/avoid.) I might not buy Fieldwork in hardcover (see para. above). But I would certainly reserve it from the library, which notifies them that the book is in demand, and encourages them to purchase more copies. The smudgey cover and title, along with the book description, point to a messy tale about anthropologists. The image and title both appeal to me, and make sense.
I find King’s complaints interesting. He may have a point that publishers are afraid to market literary fiction. Yet his argument sounds to me like he’s taking his opinion–that the cover and title should be more obvious in order to better sell the book–and universalizing it. Given that King is mostly a writer in the horror genre, and genre books tend to have more representative and less impressionistic covers and titles, I think he has a bias for what he likes that may not be as true for “ordinary readers,” as he believes.
Let me be clear. He is Stephen Freakin’ King, the bestselling author, many of whose books I’ve read and bought over the years. I am merely the author of this little weblog, and mostly unpublished. His opinion counts for more than mine. But since I consider myself one of the “ordinary readers” whom he validates, I wanted to voice my difference of opinion.
In the end, it feels unfair to quibble with King. He’s using the considerable power of his good opinion to support Fieldwork. In fact, his closing words are so good they should be repeated:
Under the drab title and drab cover, there’s a story that cooks like a mother. It’s called Fieldwork.