BOOK TITLES

Yesterday, a friend gave me a copy of Alexander McCall Smith’s new book, ‘The Full Cupboard of Life.” It was an extremely thoughtful gesture for a number of reasons, one of them being that she knows I am a fan of the person who wrote it. I have read numerous interviews with him and I find him irrepressibly funny and so full of zest that it makes me feel like I sleep my way through life by comparison. I have gone so far as to order McCall Smith’s 'Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria Von Igelfeld' series from England, since it is not available here in the States. His books are gently humorous, and from what I can tell, he himself is even more entertaining in person. I was sorry to miss his appearance at Border’s in Madison and so the gift of a signed book was an especially nice treat for me.

The book also made me think about the titles of novels I have come across just this year and how well suited or ill-suited they are, not only to the story, but to the market that they are attempting to impress. I like the title “The Full Cupboard of Life.” It is evocative and memorable and the publisher does well to include the picture of the ordinary cupboard shelves on the cover.

There are other titles that I am looking at right now that I also consider cool - ‘Global Soul’ (by Iyer), or ‘Ignorance’ (by Kundera) – brief, interesting titles.

Then there are, for me, the drip set: ‘Unless’ (by Shields) – completely forgettable, ‘Oryx and Crake’ (by Atwood) – I can never quite get the title right when I am talking about it, ‘Namesake’ (by Lahiri) – good book ill-served by boring title, ‘Pieces from Berlin’ (by Pye) – tells you absolutely nothing about the troubling Holocaust issues it confronts, ‘Three Junes’ (by Glass) – sounds like it should be about three women by that name, etc etc.

I know that some authors have a title in mind before they even write the first word of a novel. There’s a clever little book about this by André Bernard called "Now All We Need Is A Title," where he notes that mystery writer Raymond Chandler compiled lists of great titles for which he never wrote books, including "The Corpse Came In Person," "The Man with the Shredded Ear," "All Guns Are Loaded," "Too Late to Sleep."

Bernard also tells of titles that were changed at the last minute. Hitler wanted to title "Mein Kampf" ("My Struggle") as "Four-and-a-Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice.” "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit," by Sloan Wilson was originally "A Candle at Midnight,” and "Catch-22," by Joseph Heller was all set to be "Catch-18" before the author changed his mind.

When books become famous, the title becomes associated with that work alone, so that you rarely remember that Shakespeare was the source for "Brave New World," "Pale Fire," "The Dogs of War," "The Sound and the Fury," and "Something Wicked This Way Comes."

To me, Kundera (see also ‘Ignorance’ above) struck gold, though, with “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.” That title comes back to haunt me even more than the book itself. It is sheer genius to have four words play with a reader's psyche in such an enduring way.