“… what we call the rose by any other name would smell just as sweet,” Shakespeare reminds us. And it’s true for most things in the world, but not in the world of books; especially fiction. Here’s my take on things.
Ernest Hemingway believed that a title should have magic. I buy. A boring title can end a good book. An inspiring one can help make it a best seller. In my opinion, a title should at least hint at the genre and tone of the work. It should be intriguing. It should also be unique; A writer should always compare his title with existing work. Type your title into a search engine or on Amazon.com and you will know if your title is original or if someone beat you to it. I have often come across multiple books with the same title, so be careful.
It can be a single word like: Poison, revenge, or two: Poison harvest, or a complete sentence: Revenge wears black. It shouldn’t be too long, as short titles seem to work best.
In 1924, a young writer sent the manuscript of a novel to the publisher, Charles Scribner’s Sons entitled Trimalchio on West Egg. The editor hated the title and suggested the author make a change. The writer returned with several other titles, all thumbs down. They finally decided on The Great Gatsby. Nice move, don’t you think?
Although it is not a fiction book, when I was a young anthropology student I was introduced to the great work of Bronislaw Malinowski: Western Pacific Argonauts; a great title that. But it could easily have been called: An Ethnography of the People of the Trobriand Islands in the Archipelagos of New Guinea Melanesia because that was what it was. What is the best title?
It is said that you don’t have a second chance to make a first impression. And what agents and publishers say is that a book’s title is the best impression of your work and of you as the author. It is the title of a manuscript that first captures the interest of the publisher of the publishing house. More than the cover of a book, it is the title on the spine that prompts the search engine of the bookstore to look for a book and take it out. And then if you like the cover and publisher blurb, maybe buy.
Book titles have always fascinated me. For a while, I wondered how great writers came up with their inspiring titles. Hemingway, for example, who gave us:
For whom the Bell Tolls
Goodbye to guns
The sun also rises
And what vision inspired John Steinbeck to create:
east of eden
The Grapes of Wrath
In the doubtful battle
Then I discovered the worldly truth. They stole them. They were stolen, stolen or borrowed. Have a look.
For whom the Bell Tolls. Meditation XVII, John donne
Goodbye to guns. Goodbye to guns, George Peele
The sun also rises. Ecclesiastes 1: 5
East of Eden. Genesis 4:16
The Grapes of Wrath. The Battle Hymn of the RepublicBy Julia Ward Howe
In doubtful battle. lost paradise, John Milton
F. Scott Fitzgerald took Tender is the night from John Keats poem Ode to a nightingale. Thackeray has Vanity fair by John Bunyan The pilgrim’s progress. James Jones First Novel: From here to eternity it was a best-seller, received critical acclaim, and earned him a National Book Award. Drawing on their experiences in WWII, it was made into a hit movie starring Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr. Frank Sinatra made a successful album of the theme music. It made Jones rich and put him on the path to literary success. But it was Rudyard Kipling who provided the title:
Knights rankers on a spree,
Damned from here to eternity
God have mercy on us.
The list of writers who outsourced in this way is endless and includes Somerset Maugham, George Bernard Shaw, Eugene O’Neil, Aldous Huxley, William Faulkner, and many more.
So fear not. If you are stuck with a title, remember that Shakespeare’s plays, dead writers and poets, and the St. James Bible have proven to be a minefield for the writer looking for a good title. Writers have even been known to take a well-known phrase or verse and move the words around. David Halberstam did this with his Pulitzer Prize winning book The best and the brightest, whose title he borrowed from Heber’s hymn.
The brightest and best of the children of the morning,
Dawn on our darkness and help us;
So if finding a title for your novel is proving difficult, go ahead and take a look at the Bardo, ransack the Bible, and delve into ancient literature and poetic works. You are in great company.
Would i Would you steal a line from a Shakespearean sonnet or a Byron poem? Would you remove a quote from Ecclesiastes or Genesis for a book title? You can bet. And without any qualms. In fact, I already have. The novel I am currently working on was titled: “The Company of Men.” I changed it to: “The sum of things.” It comes from a poem by A E. Houseman:
These, on the day when the sky fell,
The hour when the foundations of the earth fled,
He followed his mercenary call,
And they took his salary and they’re dead.
His shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood firm and the foundations of the earth remain;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things to pay.
Epitaph about an army of mercenaries
AE Housman
