The Bitten Bullet and The Purple Dragon

If I happen to have any regular readers left out there and waiting for something new, don't get too excited; this is just an announcement.  As you know, I've been in law school for the past year and a half and hardly able simultaneously to keep up literary or "grammarly" commentary and my grades.  Obviously, I've sacrificed the blog.

Because I needed a project this winter break, and because I don't have the time or means to continue sending queries and making submissions (if, that is, they're not related to job applications), I bit the bullet and self-published.  As of today, I have made two sales.

Woo!

The book, originally intended for a Mormon audience, is plenty suitable for a "general" readership, though it's lack of horned or polygamous characters may stump the stereotypes.  Instead, it's about a kid preparing to serve his Mormon missionary service.  The church--both the institution and its people--put a tremendous amount of pressure on its youth to serve.  I did.  It was one of the best experiences of my life.  The pressure on Eugene is greater than anything I experienced, however, as his family has been stigmatized by some ugly family history, and he and his sister--the last remaining and cogent of the Cross family--are desperate to bring the name back into good repute.

Mormon missionary service, however, requires a towering degree of "worthiness," which Eugene is hardly able to claim.  He is a kleptomaniac, and despite his self-justifications (including the stealing exclusively of books), is racked with the guilt of it.  He convinces himself that he tells the truth to the religious leaders who interview him and vouch for his readiness, and he makes the trip to the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah.  Eugene, despite his stealing and despite what he is certain the membership of his local congregation surely will think of him, is a good kid.  He brings himself home and begins the devastatingly painful repentance process, which necessarily includes the returning of the thousands of books and other items that he's stolen over the years to their owners, including his friends and family.

The book is cheap: just $.99 at Barnes and Noble and $2.99 at Amazon, though only available in digital format.  (BN only provides for the Nook platform, from what I understand, while Amazon makes their ebooks available for Apple and other products.)  If you pick it up and read it, I'd love to hear you thoughts!

J.D. Salinger -- More, Please!

I had a thought.  (And what is a blogger to do with his thoughts if not write them out for the world, or his three readers, wherever they are, to see?)

So, first, by way of context:  We at The Wall have just recently finished Lewis Carroll's two Alice books, the second of which provided the opportunity to briefly examine an excised "episode," relatively recently discovered and published.  Over the weekend, I picked up my battered copy of Salinger's Seymour, and Introduction and took to enjoying it yet again.  Salinger, like Carroll, is dead.  Also like the Carroll, Salinger wrote something--a lot of somethings, if the news is to be believed--that he never published. 

The day Jerome David Salinger died, I had the same thought had by so many, and it was a greedy, unkind one.  Part of me, I'm ashamed to admit, was happy he was gone.  After all, now, finally, we might actually get the potential mountains of genius material with which he never deemed to grace the world.  The literary cannon would expand!

Maybe I was wrong. 

If I'm honest with myself, I (and I speak for me alone, though, again, if I'm being honest, I think I might even be qualified to speak for the literary world at large here, at least in this case) don't need "The Wasp in a Wig."  Don't get me wrong, I love the episode, but I think I love it more because I love Carroll and Alice; not so much for its intrinsic value (which, as it happens, is not null, but yet pales--nearly disappears! --alongside the glaring brilliance of the rest of Looking-Glass).  Is Carroll a better writer for having penned it?  Are we better scholars ("scholars") for having read it?  Does it benefit its source material?  At all?

Well ...  *sigh*  ... no, maybe-but-not-by-much, and no.

In my little collection of great writers and their great works, I've got Salinger on a pedestal similar to Carroll's.  Both have relatively little fiction available to the public (contrast this to someone like Steinbeck, who's got tons), and their ratios of near-/perfect to largely-flawed works are both impossibly high.  If I apply a friend's scale for rating literature (upon which I give Wonderland a 4.5/5 and Looking-Glass a 5/5), I would give a portion of Salinger's fiction the same: Catcher in the Rye -- 4.5/5; Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters -- 4.5/5; "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" -- 5/5; "For Esme' -- with Love and Squalor" -- 5/5.

My impression of Carroll didn't change when I read "The Wasp in a Wig," and it didn't change when I finally admitted to myself that it was far, far from the more-or-less perfection of the Alice books.  Why?  Most likely because he didn't publish it!  Would the same be the case with Salinger's alleged 15 un-published novels if they ever come to light?  Would my love of Salinger and every word he's written (well, published) remain untainted?

I don't know.  Is it worth the risk?