LOOKING FOR A TRIGGER
FOR THE NOVEL, “DEVLIN!”
JAMES
R. FISHER, JR., Ph.D.
©
August 3, 2017
REFERENCE
This
is an exchange with a consultant for the novel, “Devlin!” It is meant to give the reader an insider’s
look into the creative process, which is slow, time consuming and often
erroneous albeit constant.
JRF
THE
CONSULTANT WRITES:
But for developing a book cover, perhaps one can get by with a rudimentary grasp of the story. To be effective, a book cover has to emphasize a single appealing, or intriguing aspect of the underlying book. Does an effective movie trailer usually reflect the actual content of the movie it promotes? Ha! Almost never. But it peaks our curiosity, which is the goal.
For “Devlin” then, the right question to ask and to answer is: What "trigger" will impel your target audience to investigate the book? However, before you can answer the question you have to decide what target audience you're hoping to attract. Take a guess even. Only then can you formulate a potentially appealing cover... or covers. It's a trial and error process, but it begins with a premise, an assumption. What moves the herd? Gustav le Bon might have known.
Cheers
DR. FISHER REPLIES:
Here is what I expect to be THE AUDIENCE:
College educated.
Internationally oriented -- having traveled outside the continental United States at least once in the last ten years.
Reader of books featured in The London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, Foreign Affairs, Saturday Review of Literature, The Nation, etc. -- books not confined to national bestsellers but books that stretch the imagination beyond convention and the expected and accepted.
International travelers -- see No. 2.
Religious plurality -- empathetic to those with strong religious convictions without being hampered by their own in the reading.
Moral sophisticates -- appreciate the potential effect of the "clash of cultures" on emotional and moral stability.
Professional careers -- familiar with failure as well as success in the arena of work.
Socioeconomic sophisticates -- appreciate the dystopia of an exclusive materialistic orientation and career.
Purchasers of at least a dozen books a year -- books that stretch the imagination as well as entertain -- see No. 3.
Age -- 22 and beyond -- see No. 1.
Equally comfortable with the conceptual as the concrete, the abstract as the certain.
Taking these eleven demographics as a single idea, we have the failure of post modernity to provide a home for the restless mind.
Sanity and maturity, civility and common sense have taken a holiday as progress like greed can never be satisfied -- there must always be more progress. This has resulted in the near extinction of common decency, caring, love, intimacy and the appeal of privacy -- in other words, humanity. We are not happy campers; we have lost our moral compass and our way.
Devlin has entered this nowhere land and has attempted to thwart this advance of nihilism only to realize that escape is his only option and that life is his only penance.
THE CONSULTANT RESPONDS:
I see. You have very specific criteria for your audience. Next question, what visual cue might attract this group's interest? Who are they? Where are they? Are they an optimistic group, involved, active in the community? Or the opposite?
The title does not suggest much, but have you thought about a subtitle or explanatory sub heading?
Regards
DR. FISHER REPLIES:
First of all, I cannot imagine anyone optimistic in the present climate, but I do see most everyone involved. Activity has become a place to hide.
Looking for triggers for “Devlin” is difficult for me. I'm a visual person who reacts to visual covers of books, but clearly I am not very good at creating them. Moreover, I'm not very good at titles and subtitles of my books as you well know.
VELVET GLOVE & IRON FIST is a good example, which was meant to show the shift to a feminine dominated cultural problem solving motive from a male dominated one. I feel ahead of the curve on this, perhaps by 50 years, but I fully feel that since this book is in print and in Kindles Library it will eventually be discovered only I don't expect to be around.
As I've often told you, I write primarily for an audience not yet born. I don't say this facetiously. It is the nature of things. In another missive, which will be a surprise to my readers, I'm going to discuss a novel written 37 years ago that is so prescient that it mirrors the very moment.
Readers look for different things in novels least of which is enlightenment. DEVLIN, as a title is purposely vague because everything revolves around Seamus "Dirk" Devlin as if he is every man in a time warp.
"Devlin" is a novel about the "End of the American Century," which happened in 1968.
What has been the life blood of the American people for over two centuries has been an idea, and that idea has been increasingly replaced by technology with the world wildly imitating America's descent into nihilism in full retreat from that idea.
Socialism and Communism have been the face of that descent but they are actually incidental actors with regard to this idea as capitalism has replaced greed as the greatest sin of human civilization, obliterating this idea.
Capitalism's mantra is progress, and as with greed, you can never have enough progress. Creative destruction is its mechanism which has reached a fever pitch with the world on the brink of an atomic war with trillions of dollars of civilization's wealth going to weapons of mass destruction that have no practical value to mankind except to mask its inevitable descent into ubiquitous fear.
Philosophers and academics, novelists and poets have been writing about this descent, which has largely been ignored, while affluent societies and those on the fringe have systemically and systematically fled from reality with their electronic pacifiers as "Toys of the Mind."
Thirty year old Devlin finds himself in South African paradise in 1968. The Christian Society (Dutch Reform Church and Afrikaner government) of South Africa has unwittingly created a human zoo where the majority population (Bantus peoples) are treated as if part of the wild kingdom on display at Kruger National Park.
As point of reference, Devlin personifies sleepy American society forced by circumstances onto the international stage less than a quarter century after World War Two (1945).
The retreat from the idea of America took hold after the total unconditional end of that war with the United States the only major nation not suffering collateral damage on its own soil. Thus, with a world decimated by war, heady with its new advantage, morality and good sense no longer had a place in the mind of the times.
Devlin appears atavistic driven as he is by the pastoral nature of the American idea which had become increasingly anachronistic.
More specifically, Devlin embodies stubborn idealism where he found sanctuary in the American idea. To put it another way, "Devlin," the novel shows repeatedly that Devlin, the protagonist, is "not for sale."
Clearly confused with an inclination to retreat into cynicism, Devlin is in everyone's face without apology, especially those who march in somnambulant compromise into the future feeling no discomfort or concern that in their actions they have sacrificed the idea that once was America.
It is a novel that I have worked on for fifty years and it makes no apologies for Devlin being the face of mankind in its last innings.
Sanity and maturity, civility and common sense have taken a holiday as progress like greed can never be satisfied -- there must always be more progress. This has resulted in the near extinction of common decency, caring, love, intimacy and the appeal of privacy -- in other words, humanity. We are not happy campers; we have lost our moral compass and our way.
Devlin has entered this nowhere land and has attempted to thwart this advance of nihilism only to realize that escape is his only option and that life is his only penance.
THE CONSULTANT RESPONDS:
I see. You have very specific criteria for your audience. Next question, what visual cue might attract this group's interest? Who are they? Where are they? Are they an optimistic group, involved, active in the community? Or the opposite?
The title does not suggest much, but have you thought about a subtitle or explanatory sub heading?
Regards
DR. FISHER REPLIES:
First of all, I cannot imagine anyone optimistic in the present climate, but I do see most everyone involved. Activity has become a place to hide.
Looking for triggers for “Devlin” is difficult for me. I'm a visual person who reacts to visual covers of books, but clearly I am not very good at creating them. Moreover, I'm not very good at titles and subtitles of my books as you well know.
VELVET GLOVE & IRON FIST is a good example, which was meant to show the shift to a feminine dominated cultural problem solving motive from a male dominated one. I feel ahead of the curve on this, perhaps by 50 years, but I fully feel that since this book is in print and in Kindles Library it will eventually be discovered only I don't expect to be around.
As I've often told you, I write primarily for an audience not yet born. I don't say this facetiously. It is the nature of things. In another missive, which will be a surprise to my readers, I'm going to discuss a novel written 37 years ago that is so prescient that it mirrors the very moment.
Readers look for different things in novels least of which is enlightenment. DEVLIN, as a title is purposely vague because everything revolves around Seamus "Dirk" Devlin as if he is every man in a time warp.
"Devlin" is a novel about the "End of the American Century," which happened in 1968.
What has been the life blood of the American people for over two centuries has been an idea, and that idea has been increasingly replaced by technology with the world wildly imitating America's descent into nihilism in full retreat from that idea.
Socialism and Communism have been the face of that descent but they are actually incidental actors with regard to this idea as capitalism has replaced greed as the greatest sin of human civilization, obliterating this idea.
Capitalism's mantra is progress, and as with greed, you can never have enough progress. Creative destruction is its mechanism which has reached a fever pitch with the world on the brink of an atomic war with trillions of dollars of civilization's wealth going to weapons of mass destruction that have no practical value to mankind except to mask its inevitable descent into ubiquitous fear.
Philosophers and academics, novelists and poets have been writing about this descent, which has largely been ignored, while affluent societies and those on the fringe have systemically and systematically fled from reality with their electronic pacifiers as "Toys of the Mind."
Thirty year old Devlin finds himself in South African paradise in 1968. The Christian Society (Dutch Reform Church and Afrikaner government) of South Africa has unwittingly created a human zoo where the majority population (Bantus peoples) are treated as if part of the wild kingdom on display at Kruger National Park.
As point of reference, Devlin personifies sleepy American society forced by circumstances onto the international stage less than a quarter century after World War Two (1945).
The retreat from the idea of America took hold after the total unconditional end of that war with the United States the only major nation not suffering collateral damage on its own soil. Thus, with a world decimated by war, heady with its new advantage, morality and good sense no longer had a place in the mind of the times.
Devlin appears atavistic driven as he is by the pastoral nature of the American idea which had become increasingly anachronistic.
More specifically, Devlin embodies stubborn idealism where he found sanctuary in the American idea. To put it another way, "Devlin," the novel shows repeatedly that Devlin, the protagonist, is "not for sale."
Clearly confused with an inclination to retreat into cynicism, Devlin is in everyone's face without apology, especially those who march in somnambulant compromise into the future feeling no discomfort or concern that in their actions they have sacrificed the idea that once was America.
It is a novel that I have worked on for fifty years and it makes no apologies for Devlin being the face of mankind in its last innings.
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