For one reason or another, while sort of spiraling down the drain toward the end of this draft of Seems to Fit, I’ve been thinking some about Merry-Go-Round.
Don’t fret if you don’t recognize the title Merry-Go-Round. This was the novel I wrote back in 2007-08, and apparently last mentioned here at RAMH in a post about two-and-a-half years ago. In response to a hypothetical question as to its genre, I once offered:
Well, let’s see. It’s sort of a thriller. It’s sort of a near-future or parallel-world kind of story. There’s some funny stuff. And it’s also political. Does that help?
Now that it’s been at arm’s length, so to speak, for a few years, I doubt that it helps… but I still can’t think of a much better way to describe it, not without leaking a whole lot of plot details. You can read its prologue (here) and know a little more — at least maybe get a sense of the sort of world the action takes place: why it’s a “near-future or parallel-world kind of story.”
I don’t know what if anything I’ll ever do with Merry-Go-Round. At the time, it felt to me like a warming-up exercise. Maybe it will someday justify working on some more. In the meantime, I’ve been thinking particularly about a passage from about two-thirds of the way through.
All you really need to know to read the sample yourself is the following (repeated in a text box at the start of the excerpt):
This excerpt from Merry-Go-Round leads into a “big reveal”: what exactly has happened to one Walker Bryce, citizen of an unknown country — not quite the USA? (Of course it’s not the USA. It can’t be the USA, can it? Not with the dome of the Capitol building in the capital city, clad in stark gray steel armor?) All Walker knows is that he’ recently been… kidnapped, hasn’t he? or rescued? after being held… held… a prisoner, was it? Yes, rescued… yet kept in some sort of hospital… And now he’s being escorted out, finally, by a woman he knows only as “Tex.”
Not sure why I’ve been thinking of this passage in particular; it doesn’t have anything to do with Seems to Fit, nor with my work or personal life. I have to say that I do like the depiction of the scene — the details — especially given that they’re mundane, but being regarded by someone who at least believes he has never seen anything like them previously.
Maybe that sense of wonder — the shock of the familiar, the strangeness of the expected and hoped-for — is just a metaphor for what every writer hopes to induce in every reader. Maybe we can’t always (sorry, Herr Kafka) write books to stab our readers’ souls, to wake them up with a blow to the head — or to make them happy, for that matter. But at least we can write sentences and story lines that make them go: Whoa. I’ve never seen that before, have I?
The password for accessing this excerpt is the full name of the character first mentioned there (capitalized just that way, and yes, with the space between first and surname).
Nance says
Left my comment on the piece, itself, but I’ll add that it’s a very impressive “warm-up.”
You have the dangedest word verifications!
whaddayamean says
I like that, the “shock of the familiar.” I haven’t heard it put that way before (or have I?!), but know exactly what you mean.
John says
Nance: We aim to please. :)
Left a jokey sort of reply over there with your comment. More seriously, though, I’m glad you liked it… Even though I didn’t know you at the time I wrote it, I think you’re likely an excellent example of the sort of reader I’d hoped to reach with the book. (Especially for its politics — still germane, and maybe even moreso, despite the changing of the guard “at the top” since the time when I wrote the book.) Some of the technology may be more than you’d claim to understand… but since it’s a sort of alternate-universe story, and its technology is thus only partly “real,” I think it’d be safe to just bleep over the dicey bits, ha.
John says
whaddayamean: PBS (I think) hosted a series about modern art years ago, hosted by Robert Hughes, called The Shock of the New. But I doubt that I’m the first person to do, well, anything, including the standing of that title on its head. (A Google search just now confirms — not that I remember ever having seen any of those uses.)
But I like the way the phrase fits the impact of certain fiction — even works nominally fantasy/SF — in the way they depict the reader’s supposedly everyday reality. Really good non-fiction does the same thing: you suddenly realize what a staggeringly strange/beautiful/exciting/scarifying world you really live in.
(Disclaimer: I’m not saying that Merry-Go-Round as a whole pulls that off. I like the suggestion of it in this passage, though.)
s.o.m.e.one's brudder says
a one-made-up-word description on the brief amount that I had been exposed to (I didn’t realize that you had completed MGR!), that maybe you might like: Vonnegut-ish (in a Cat’s Cradle, kind of thinking).
John says
brudder: If that’s the sort of one-made-up-word description you can think of to apply to ANYTHING I’ve written, then please: make up some more! :)
I did finish MGR, yeah — to the point where I queried a handful of agents about it. I even started work on a sequel, Merrily We Roll Along. But I kept hearing what eventually became Seems to Fit whispering in my ear. I went back and forth, back and forth about it…
…and then I read this post, at the site of a highly respected (and very nice) professional editor. She was answering a question which someone had along the lines of, “What should I work on while awaiting responses from agents/editors about the first book in a series? The NEXT book in the series, or something completely different?”
That post remains one of the single most influential blog posts I’ve run across in the last few years — influential to me, anyhow. Although counter-intuitive (again, to me), it was so… so… commonsensical. It aligned with what my head and heart were both telling me. And I’m as positive as I can be that I’m happier now for following the advice.
So anyway, as I said, I may get back to MGR eventually. (Especially since Seems to Fit basically must be a one-off, with no sequel.)
Jayne says
I know I said before that I like it when a book stabs me, but I also like a book the rolls along slowly, mundane detail and all, (think Woolf) so long as it has the “Whoa” factor.
I think of all the great writers I’ve read, stretched over all genres (‘cept I can’t stomach romance novels), and there is always in their writing a Whoa factor–even if it is one single sentence, a small moment in the story–that forces a pause and introspection.
Your writing certainly makes me pause (that door/not a door thing–Whoa!) I couldn’t think up stuff like this… that’s part of why I’m fascinated by sci-fi, I guess.
(Re the Prologue: I love that picture of Mikey pushing the green button, having nothing happen, and then trashing it. Something very big is going to happen here…) ;)
John says
Jayne: glad you read and liked the Prologue, too. Prologues are one of those hot-button topics among the normally quiet world of writers, agents, and editors — many people argue (ferociously) that including a prologue is a sign of weakness, or distraction.
Hard for me to be an absolutist about almost anything, though… except absolutism, which I hate, absolutely. :)
Jayne says
@John – John- I wanted to mention last night, in this thread, the sense that I got while reading your prose, but I was interrupted by a small person vying for my attention. (Was it dinnertime? I do tend to get caught up in things and forget to eat… forget others need to eat). Anyway, I kept thinking of Don Delillo–the observations, the detail, certain phrasing–there’s a beautiful cerebral flow to your writing that is, for me, reminiscent of Delillo..
Later in the evening I read a humorous on-line poster– Rules for Builders and Crafters. One of the listed rules was: “Projects are Stackable–It’s not that I’m starting something new before finishing something old. I’m nesting the new project inside the old.” ;)
John says
Jayne: DeLillo?!? Oh jeez, I love his stuff (haven’t read it all but have read most of it) — maybe he influenced me more than I know!
You have brilliantly connected that poster of rules to the act of writing (and reading, for that matter — especially reading as a writer). Here’s the whole thing:
It comes (as indicated) from David Malki’s wonderful wondermark.com site — “An Illustrated Jocularity.” He obviously meant it as something of a joke (the image’s “hover title” there: “No honey, it says ‘take it apart,’ not ‘put it back together afterwards'”). But darned if he hasn’t actually come up with something seriously awesome!
Jayne says
Yes, that’s it! Gosh I’m bad at citing. Even got my daughter in trouble with it (paraphrasing issue- she lost 15 points… C’mon teach–this is 6th grade! And it wasn’t on the rubric). Perhaps I shouldn’t be helping her write papers.
Anyway, yes, Malki’s brilliant. He’s got a good thing going on over there at wondermark.
Oy vay, that dang recpatcha thing: DSM-IV okingiti. What the heck, is that some kind of fancy new diagnosis? May need Nance for this one. ;)
John says
Jayne: Oh, I can’t cite worth a damn. But I can
stealborrow with the best (or worst) of the guys in the room. :) (Cf., now that I’m thinking about it, a gazillion whiskey river Fridays posts!)[My own reCaptcha of the moment is the hauntingly Pynchonesque invisto training.]