Three Letters

Description

Bill Lavender

Three Letters

9781952419614 (pbk.) (Spuyten Duyvil)

455 pages: $25.95
2019

Three Letters, published by Spuyten Duyvil in 2021, is a novel in the form of three sequential novellas, tracking the life of a hapless (picaresque) hero known only as Q.

Author’s Preface

Gentle Reader:

I’m sure you understand, without my having to write it, that I hope this book—product of my imagination and reason, my dreams, my readings, and my life—will be the best book ever written, full of the most elegant and clever prose, every word le mot juste, every word with a double (triple, quadruple?) intention.  But if, as Dickens has it, like begets like, what could this sterile, untilled time of ours beget but a shrivelled, whimsical character, full of thoughts that ought never to have existed, thoughts that might arise in a prison, full of misery and mourning?

What we love in a story, as that infallible arbiter of literary taste, the Market, proves, are love and romantic grief, scandal, and happy endings where all that has come before is reversed.  However, I (and though I pass for the father, I am but the stepfather of Q) have no desire to go with this fashion, nor to implore you, dear reader, perhaps with tears in my eyes, as others do, to pardon or excuse the defects you’ll perceive in this child of mine.  You are neither its kinsman nor its friend; your soul is your own and your will as free as anyone’s.  You’re master of your own house just as our President is master of our taxes.  “Under my cloak I kill the king,” the saying goes; under cover, all of us are free.  Thus you are exempt from any obligation to read on, and you can speak as you will of the story without fear of being abused for any ill or rewarded for any good you might report.

And though the composition of this book cost me a bit of labor, no section of it caused more anxiety than this Preface.  How many times did I sit down at the laptop to write it, and how many times did I get up again, not having any idea how to start?  One of these times, as I was pondering the blank screen, chin in hand, thinking what I might say, a certain clever friend of mine, who works in the publishing industry, stepped into my office and inquired what was so distracting.  I told him I was mired in writer’s block thinking of the Preface I had to make for my novel, Q, and it was troubling me so it was causing me to question the entire project.

“It can’t work,” I told him.  “How will a general fiction market take to me, so late in my career, after all these years in the oblivion of poetry, putting out a book so arch, so devoid of innovation, so derivative and allusive, with many parts stolen outright, utterly lacking in inspiration?  I wish I could handle—especially since so many others seem proficient—a story full of emotion and devoid of political thinking, or a great moral quandary in a bedroom conversation, or any of the many genres that treat the emotional and philosophical tribulations of the upper-middle-class American.  But I have neither the gift for scatology nor a reviewer in my pocket.  Should I make, for the back cover, a queue of authors I’ve heard of, beginning with Acker and ending with Zukofsky, just to boast the respectability of a list?

“I’ll have to do without the customary mention of corporate sponsors, grant agencies, and previous works every book includes at the beginning to prove the legitimacy of its author.  I can get two of three friends to write endorsements, I suppose, for the jacket, and this might be enough to trick a few people into buying it, since if they don’t recognize the author of the quote they’ll assume it is someone famous they’re unaware of and be ashamed to mention it.

“But all in all,” I continued, “I think it best to let my Q remain buried in some archive where a graduate student may one day discover it and bring it to light as a lost masterpiece, in which case everyone could read about it without having to read in it.  Alas, it appears I’ve wasted all these years on a project which will net me nothing.”

My friend broke into a laugh and then slapped his thigh. “Oh come on, Bill, I’ve always thought of you as smart and practical.  These trivial details are bothering you because you don’t know how the business works.  We’ll turn your Q into a best seller in a heartbeat.”

“Really?” I replied.  “And just how do you propose we do that?”

“Well,” he said, “your problem is that you’re worrying too much about the content and not enough about the package.  You’ve got the right idea with the blurbs.  And you can get an epigram from Google™ quotations.  What you want is something from the Bible.  The Christian Market is growing every day and is easily captured.  The slightest mention of the Bible will do it.”

“But,” I protested, “some of the things I say…”

“Don’t worry about what you say,” he insisted.  “They won’t even notice the content.

“And I’m going to suggest a strategy that’s lately become the norm.  We’ll utilize an analytic program to scan for products, motifs, and current phrases from best sellers over the past two years.  Then we can seed your novel with snippets of these, product names, foods, cars, and current slang.  It’s quick and easy; we just use search-and-replace.  And then you can use these product placements to get free advertising.

“And the biggest question of all, of course, the one that makes more difference to sales than any other aspect of a book, is the cover.  I’ll have my friend who is a market psychologist run reports on the color combinations that are selling best in the current milieu, and we’ll look at the semiotics of various symbolic indices.  We’ll need to figure out if we ought to go the pistol-and-garters route, or if earth-tones and nature scenes are working these days, or if dogs have come back into fashion.

“As to this Preface you’re sweating over, don’t.  No one reads them.  We’ll just paste in jabber-text to fill those couple of pages, put ‘Author’s Preface’ at the top, and no one will be the wiser.”

I listened to my friend’s indisputable wisdom with stunned recognition.  His observations made such an impression on me that I decided on this audience-mocking form for the Preface, simply stolen from an earlier work, to allow you, dear reader, to prove my friend’s good sense and devour this product which ridicules your ignorance as if it were the latest pharmaceutical fad, the Viagra™ of whatever year this is.  “Fear God and the stupidity of the populace,” said Pound, and we prove that son of a bitch right every day.  Please, comrade, continue the trend and let this handsome jacket decorate your shelves today.

Take this story of Q, a generic demographic composite, and your mirror.  Yes, that shadow you just startled is yourself.

Here’s hoping God continues to withhold your good sense.

Vale.