Comments on: Madcap Opinions in the Penny Press! http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/stevereads/2012/06/madcap-opinions-in-the-penny-press/ What I read and why Mon, 17 Jun 2013 22:43:35 +0000 hourly 1 By: Steve Donoghue http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/stevereads/2012/06/madcap-opinions-in-the-penny-press/comment-page-1/#comment-12235 Steve Donoghue Sun, 01 Jul 2012 13:05:58 +0000 http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/stevereads/?p=4993#comment-12235 Why Michael5000, you cheeky thing you! Your open defiance of my first point about the importance of titles is charming but hopeless – a person’s name is a key part of their very identity? I’d be amazed if you knew even one person for whom that was true, unless you hang out with the Windsors (and even then, the facts would be against you, since they changed their name in 1917 without at all changing their identity). Fitzgerald’s preposterous gaffe is relevant not because titles are, as you very nicely put it, conceptual gateways into the text (Trimalchio in West Egg would still have been a great novel, after all); it’s relevant in demonstrating that authors very often make a pig’s breakfast of what to call the things they write. If you look at the Table of Contents of the new July issue of Open Letters, for example, you will see some half-dozen good, memorable, snappy titles. In every one of those cases, not only was the title thought up by an editor but the piece’s original title, thought up by the too-involved author, was GHASTLY. You might not agree – but Michael4999 would have! His identity seems more amenable!

]]> By: michael5000 http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/stevereads/2012/06/madcap-opinions-in-the-penny-press/comment-page-1/#comment-12233 michael5000 Sun, 01 Jul 2012 08:11:44 +0000 http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/stevereads/?p=4993#comment-12233 But, if a title wasn’t one of the most important parts of a piece of writing — which it is, as sure as a person’s name is a key part or his or her identity — then Fitzgerald’s preposterous gaffe would be irrelevant, wouldn’t it? The fact that Trimalchio in West Egg is an obvious disaster just underscores how critical titles are; they’re the conceptual gateway into the text. Catch-22 has been printed with dozens of covers, some pretty good, some pretty bad, and all more or less shiny lures to try to get someone to open the cover. But the switch from Catch-18 is much more significant; Catch-18 isn’t just a less snappy piece of ad copy, it’s the foundation stone of a different, weaker book.

…having said this, the title issue seems like a much bigger deal for a novel than for a magazine article. But I can understand McPhee’s frustration.

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