Writing can have its ups and downs, its roller-coaster swings; it can run that sort of bipolar, high-tide-low-tide gamut, from the stuff that’s exceptional to the stuff that stinks to no stuff at all. There are the good days when I can’t wait to get to the keyboard to pour into it a fusillade of imaginative ideas. And there are the difficult days of staring at a blank screen without a cogent thought to my name, listening to the whooshing sound of the idle computer mocking me. There is a creative progression and retrogression to most artistic pursuits, but when there is more ebbing than flowing, the going gets rough. Writers can be left wondering if they will ever write a decent word again: self-pitying, baffled as to how the muse who was so ubiquitous yesterday could abscond so rapidly today.
Even given all the pinnacles and low points in creating a book, no aspect has been more difficult for me than choosing a title. I think it can be generally agreed that a title’s main purpose should be to attract the potential reader’s eye, regardless of its pertinence. Relevance, as a criterion for choosing the name of the book, can weigh the process down with dull titles that won’t sell, such as: “Some Stories About When I Was Younger” or “Boy I Had Fun and Was Terrified and Had Sex in the ’50s and ’60s” or “Robert Klein: My Early Life, Vol. I.” I want a title that will grab book lovers and suck them in like a magnet, making the purchase of this book inescapable. I have a meeting with my editor from Simon & Schuster about the matter. “Have you come up with a title yet?” he asks.
“Yes, I believe I’ve come up with a real winner, can’t miss.”
“Splendid, what is it?”
“Well, I’ve given it a lot of thought, and all things considered, I’d like to call the book Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.”
“How can you use that title? It’s already the title of another book.”
“You can’t copyright a title; there’s no legal reason why we can’t use it,” I say.
“It’s not a question of legalities, it’s the title of one of the best-selling books of all time, for God’s sake.”
“Precisely,” I say. “Can you think of a better reason to use it? It worked very well for them. It’s tried and tested.”
“But the reader would be expecting an entirely different kind of book,” he says.
“That may be true, but by the time they realize it, they will have already paid for the book and read some of it, and we will have made the sale.”
“Don’t you think that’s rather unscrupulous, to deceive a person buying the book like that?” he says.
“Don’t you read the trades?” I say. “Haven’t you noticed how difficult it is to sell books? We need all the help we can get. Besides, you’re not supposed to tell a book by its cover.”
My editor is getting frustrated. “You simply cannot use the title of a book like that, only recently a best-seller.”
“I’m beginning to see your point. Too recent. How about The Old Man and the Sea? That title sold millions.”
“No, that won’t do, either,” he says.
“The Bible?”
“No, no, no.”
“Portrait of the Artist As—”
“No. You know something? You’re crazy,” he says. “A better title for you would be ‘A Young Man Who Became an Annoying Lunatic in His Old Age.’ Now get out of my office.”
“Wait just a minute, no, no, just a minute. Say that again.”
“No, not that, the other thing.”
“What other thing?”
“The title, I think you got it.”
“ ‘A Young Man Who Became an Annoying Lunatic in His Old Age’? I was just being sarcastic.”
“I don’t care what you were being, it’s perfect: ‘A Young Man Who Became an Annoying Lunatic in His Old Age.’ A little long for the talk shows, but right on the money. It covers every aspect of what a good title should. It’s bizarre and eye-catching, plus it’s perfectly apt. It also assuages that ethical hang-up of yours, since nobody has used it before.”
My editor is at his computer furiously searching for something. I assume it’s a fine-print escape clause in my contract. “I’ll be damned. You can’t use that title,” he says. Then he reads aloud from the computer: “A Young Man Who Became an Annoying Lunatic in His Old Age, translated from the Farsi by Mohammed El Farouq, published 1938, Sunlabi Publishers, Tehran. How do you like that?”
“Bad luck,” I say. “Well, at least the book is written, that’s twenty-five percent of the whole deal right there. Can you give me another six months on the title, or think of one yourself?”
“Get out of my office.”
“ ‘Get Out of My Office’? No, that one doesn’t do it for me. It’s not catchy enough, and they’ll think it’s about someone who works in an office.”
“Get out of my office,” he says.
“You really like that one, don’t you. I’ll give it some thought. But I’d like you to keep an open mind, too, so don’t give me an answer now, but just think about Gone With the Wind, would you?”