It's Not What You Know

Preparing for the long Thanksgiving weekend, I stopped at the local public library to pick up a book or two. Miracle of miracles, Doctorow's The March was there on the shelf of new fiction, the wallflower waiting to be asked to dance. One book is never enough, and I thought about grabbing something that had been circulated often. Unfortunately, the library is completely computerized now, and the pasted in flap of paper with its list of due dates is no longer used. Plan B involved an estimate of the novel's girth as a tool to selection. I picked up a thick book, perused the inside cover and determined, without reading glasses, that it was historical fiction. Since that is what I write, I decided to see what is marketable these days, with an eye to repairing my unagented manuscript.

Ah, but it's not what you know but who you know in this world. John Wesley Harding can write music, I presume, since he has several albums to his credit. His literary agent must have guessed that he could wrote prose as well, but, unfortunately, he cannot. The first ten pages, the part that must grab the agent, were all right for a little literary fluff after a large meal. By page fifteen, the sentences and style were getting more and more uneven, a rocky row to hoe. After fifty four pages, I absolutely gave up. Misfortune was sometimes reminiscent of a Victorian style novel that segued into a Harlequin romance, a tome in urgent need of an editor. After reading Doctorow's latest, John's foray into the literary world was that much more pathetic.

Given the poor quality of the writing, one can only presume that the book was published because the author had a "platform" on which to stand. Already a name known in the folk music world, he must have a ready built audience to buy the book. Apparently no one bothered to look further, or the novel would be listed where it belongs, on the website of PublishAmerica.