What's In A Name?

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."


Yes, you're right, Juliet. But would you even approach it in the first place if the flower were called vomit or boogers? Unless you lived in Harry Potter's world, I'd venture a guess that you wouldn't. 


I do think a name's important. And a title too. I confess, I do judge a book by its cover. The artwork, yes, and the font, too. But most of all I judge by the title. Before I open the book or read the back flap cover, that is.


There are all sorts of titles. There is the character's name (Macbeth, Beloved, Mrs. Dalloway). Or the title/role of a character (The Pilot's Wife, The Lord of the Rings, The Count of Monte Cristo). There is the place (Wuthering Heights) or the period (1984) or the big theme (Atonement). There are plenty of things (The Tell-Tale Heart, The Lovely Bones, The Things They Carried). There are active verbs (Housekeeping, Digging to America). And then of course there are the prepositional and other phrases (To Kill a Mockingbird, Then We Came to the End, Waiting for the Barbarians).


What all of these titles have in common is that they each fronted a story that received high literary acclaim. But frankly I find some of the titles far less intriguing than others. Beloved, for example, sounds like it should belong on a Harlequin rack at Safeway. Atonement sounds awfully preachy and Housekeeping sounds pretty damn boring. And, if I knew nothing of Shakespeare, I wouldn't have a clue who or what or where Macbeth was. Maybe he just didn't know how important the title was. Or maybe he didn't have much competition so it didn't much matter.


I do believe there is a trend these days to come up with something really eye-catching.  I mean, would The Bard ever have thought of a title like The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society or The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency? Back in 1948, titles were still pretty straightforward when James Michener won the Pulitzer Prize for Tales of the South Pacific. And later Pulitzer winners seemed to follow most of the same categories I listed above. There were names (Beloved, Toni Morrison, 1988, and Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout, 2009). In 1956 MacKinlay Kantor's prize-winning title was place-based, with Andersonville. In 1973, Eudora Welty went with the character's title for her Pulitzer title: The Optimist's Daughter. There have been thing titles over the years, some of which probably raised a few eyebrows in their day: Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels (1975) and Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song (1980). 


 But it wasn't until 1990 that the titles started getting longer and a little more peculiar: The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (Oscar Hijuelos, 1990); A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain (Robert Olen Butler, 1993); The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (Michael Chabon, 2001); The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Diaz, 2008); and A Visit From the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan, 2011).


So what's a contemporary writer to do? The trick of course is to come up with a title that hints at what the book's about (character, theme, etc) while piquing the reader's interest. You can still go basic, at least that's my sense from looking at the current New York Times Best Seller list (The Help, The Confession). You can still go with a name or place (Quinn, Maine). Phrases are still pretty popular (Now You See Her and  Then Came You). Or you can go with something totally outlandish, something you know no author has done before, like Steig Larsson's The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest or Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. 


Of course, just because something's on the best seller list doesn't mean it's of high literary value. But it does mean people are reading it, which is really what writers like me want after all.


The novel I'm working on originally started out as Climbing Backwards. I loved that title, still do. But it doesn't make sense anymore now that the novel has morphed into a new creature. So here I am now trying again to find a title.


If you walked into a store and knew nothing of a book but its title, which of these would you be inclined to read?


The High One
High and Mighty
Hell on High
Climbing in Hell
View from Hell's Balcony
The Minister's Wife
A Minister's Wife Goes to Hell