Methods: Copying Masters

Last week I attended a dinner for Matthew Stadler's newest book, Chloe Jarret's La Cucaracha. Stadler wrote this book as a "cover" of John LeCarre's mystery novel A Murder of Quality. While in Mexico to work on another book, Stadler stumbled upon Le Carre's book and decided that he wished to write the same book. 

To embark upon the writing of a "cover" book is, of course, to embrace the formulaic (by definition), and to set aside concerns about authenticity. (Anne K. Yoder wrote a thorough review of Stadler's work as a cover on The Millions, which is worth a read even if you don't plan to read Stadler or LeCarre.) Listening to Stadler talk about wanting to break free of his own conventions, I realized that whether we are novices or have boxes of books with our name on them, we all continue to practice learning the form(s). 

Stadler started by making a complete, chapter-by-chapter "score" of Le Carre's book, in which he framed the major events of each chapter, as well as the entrances and departures of characters. With this framework in place, Stadler set out to flesh out the story with his own characters, set in his own book in Guanajuato, Mexico (Le Carre's book was English in place and manner). He held up the score, a couple of sheets of paper taped together with tidy boxes holding all pertinent information. When his book was finished, some of his friends were dismayed, wishing for a "Matthew Stadler book." So he self-published La Cucaracha under the pseudonym Chloe Jarret (he had reclaimed authorship since, hence new title).

It seems clear to me that Stadler's book is a cover notionally more than anything, no more a mere adaption of another author's work than one person is an adaptation of her parents. A shared set of characteristics does not make two things identical, and an antecedent is not inherently more valuable than its descendant. But the idea of a cover is, as Stadler himself claims, an homage to the original as well. Homage is central to creativity, whether the tribute is paid to other works, or to people or ideas or places. Nonetheless, a cover book seems radical when undertaken openly by an author whose own work already had fans. 

Was Stadler merely escaping the constraints of his own name? This is a real challenge to established voices, as discussed in a recent New Yorker article on the author John Banville/Benjamin Black.

What can we learn as cover artists? Have you ever studied the score of a favorite work? When you practice through copying, do you feel it is your own work? There was a time when no visual artist worth the title would deign to deny intimate familiarity with the masters. To copy and copy and copy was the way to learn. One would imagine tracing to know how it felt to hold a stick of charcoal the way the masters had. Only by knowing how each effect was achieved did someone learn how they wanted to do it differently. We don't value such labors as much, and the painting factories in China that crank out flawless oils by the hundreds are supplying gauche McVillas rather than discerning collectors. The understanding of the masters has not rendered the copyists valuable, even thought their iterations are to some extent their own covers. Copying may be tolerated as a private practice, but it has little respect in the literary world as a method. In music, on the other hand, remixing and covering are a rich part of the culture and deft plays are celebrated.

Where does creative authorship begin?

What Books Might Be: Publication Studio

On Wednesday, shortly after announcing our very first grant winner, I headed to a book event with Matthew Stadler, author and founder of Portland's Publication Studio. The evening revolved around a dinner, during which Stadler read excerpts from his latest novel, Chloe Jarret's La Cucaracha. After the dinner, Stadler spoke with John Roderick about the process of making this book and the future of books in general. While we tend, here at Typetrigger, to think digitally, we are essentially book people, and what is happening to books and other print publications has both worried and excited us.

One of the most thrilling new ideas for the world of the physical book is the on-demand book. Sites like Lulu and MagCloud have been offering on-demand high quality printing and binding for a while, and many authors are turning to these kinds of outlets for self publishing. While the books from sites like these are physical and "real," the relationship between reader and book provider is anonymous. Publication Studio and a handful of other print-on-demand services are now looking at what happens when the machinery is moved into a storefront, with real people to assist both the book makers and the book seekers. 

Two editions of Stadler's books were available that night. The first was a file-folder covered edition made by Publication Studio, sturdy and reminiscent of a script. The second was a full-color covered beauty that rivaled the trade paperbacks you'd see in a traditional bookstore, which was printed by the Espresso Book Machine at Third Place Press. Both editions looked and felt far better than the on-demand books I was seeing a couple of years ago, and the concept of a book-buying revival was thrilling. 

The idea of self-publishing is at once empowering and disheartening. Instead of feeling that to succeed we must be magically "chosen" and then assisted along the path to renown, we must consider the whole process and take responsibility for it, from plot to editing to marketing. Roderick asked Stadler a bit about the ego shift that must be experienced by a self-published author: does he not feel undervalued with smaller audiences? Stadler argued that in fact we must place more value on the one-to-one connections. Not each book need be a best seller (and the warehouses of overstock from traditional publishers prove that large print runs do not guarantee large audiences). If we as writers can transport one person: good. That person might share the experience, and it might multiply in a grassroots fashion. But even if it does not, the intimate has value. 

This reminded me so much of what we experience on Typetrigger. Though we might not meet in a bookshop or at a reading, we are lucky to have an intimate sense of our audience, a sort of call-and-response that ripples through the community. I am excited to consider the ways in which Typetrigger and our writers might interact with these new on-demand houses.  

Stadler covered a lot of ground during his talk, and so much of what he shared felt relevant to the Typetrigger community, so next week I will write more blog posts about some of the other themes of the evening.