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May 28, 2008
Title Your Novel in Three Easy Steps! or, The Abstraction of Abstraction
Certainly there's some precedent for titling a work with the prepositional construction "The Blank of Blank." (The Wings of the Dove, The Heart of the Matter, and The Nightmares' forgotten R&B classic "The Horrors of the Black Museum..." come to mind, and and that's just off the top of our heads.) Indeed, pairing a wispy abstraction with something surprisingly concrete can be a recipe for piquancy: Think of The Possibility of an Island or The House of Mirth.
The innovation represented by the recent spate of prepositional titles is the pairing of two abstractions. A writer willing to settle for the tried-and-true might consider recombining some of the nouns above to create a title for her manuscript, such as The Secret of God, The Lost Things of Small Things, or The Inheritance of History. But for the truly ambitious, may we suggest the following approach: roll some virtual dice, take the corresponding abstract nouns from Column A and Column B, insert a "the" (or two) and an "of," and you're off to the races!
Column A:
- 1. Earnestness
- 2. Persistence
- 3. Irritability
- 4. Malodorousness
- 5. Malice
- 6. Whimsy
Column B:
- 1. Splendor
- 2. Etiquette
- 3. Particle Physics
- 4. Numismatism
- 5. Large Things
- 6. Medium Things
- Garth Risk Hallberg @ 7:09 AM ~ comments: 7 ~ Links to this post
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Here's my dice roll: The Malice of Ettiquette
Max @ May 28, 2008 7:12 AMKirk, Tx.
@ May 28, 2008 9:28 AMThe Numismatist of Whimsy
and
The Stench of Splendor (which has both assonance and a little alliteration, not to mention the flexibility of working for fiction or non-fiction. Imagine a history of the Gilded Age or a critique of Bushonomics)
Sincerely,
Garth's Mom
@ May 28, 2008 9:33 AM
Or, the Malordorousness of Splendor.
Saving Private Ryan
Being John Malkovich
Losing Isaiah
Finding Nemo
Following Sean
Understanding Jane
Asking Jenny
If they were really hip, they could have titled "Hannibal" "Eating Paul Krendler" instead. Except there was already an "Eating Raoul" in 1982. I must say, a title way ahead of its time.
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