When I first encountered his writing during the fall of 1968 at the recommendation of a friend who was attending a college elsewhere in Indiana, Vonnegut was a breath of fresh air. I loved the sassiness, hipness, and dark humor of books. They had none of the pretentiousness of serious literature but were seriously satirical.
Besides, he was writing about the heartland of the neglected Midwest, at least at one point in each book. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater nails the milieu and remains my favorite.
Overall, though, I feel an overarching nihilism negates a redemptive mission for his work. As for the gimmicks? Let’s just say this former favorite has shrunk in my estimation over the years.
Back in high school, my best friend’s mom was buddies with a Greek neighbor who used to proclaim, “Athens! She is beautiful! The rest of the country?” A spitting sound I could never ever spell out accompanied by the open palms of both hands coming down side by side from overhead.
His other best friend was Greek, too. A kind of philosopher, in fact.
My civics teacher was Greek, as was the drama and debate coach.
In college, a landmark restaurant just off campus passed into a new generation much the way the one in my fictional Daffodil did. Somehow, the details stayed vaguely with me.
Off in the Pacific Northwest, I became fond of souvlaki and spanakopita on our forays to the University District of Seattle.
On my return to Ohio, there was a delightful Greek bakery in a small storefront on a quiet residential street six or seven blocks east of our house.
In Baltimore, “All the pizza’s made by Greeks,” seemed wrong – where were the Italians? And out on the road, “All the diners are owned by Greeks.” Little did I know about flatbreads.
In New Hampshire, the Athens restaurant in downtown Manchester – popular but, to my senses, bland and tired – in contrast to one of my favorite takeout places where we ordered for the office – the menu that introduced me to gyros.
Add to that the cathedral’s big Glendi, which sent food to the newsroom in gratitude for our coverage, or the little frame St. Nicholas I’d pass on one route to and from the paper.
One of our older coworkers, a photo lab tech, was Greek – kind and smiling, though I got to know little else.
A sharp-tongued but very competent colleague in the composing room was also Greek. Named Pericles after his grandfather, though it was shortened for us.
All of this was fleeting and fragmentary but came together in Dover and its annual, free-admission Greek festival.
And then confirmed at Davos in Watertown Square, Massachusetts, a block down the street from our weekly choir practice. The food was great, though run by Hispanics.
Now I can tell you there are Greek-Americans almost everywhere. Opa!
After recently tweaking the cover for my Hometown News novel, I found my eyes zeroing in on another volume and once again questioning its effectiveness.
This design continues at Amazon. While Cassia goes Goth in the plot, I suspect this was a bit extreme for her style.
What’s Left: Within a daughter’s own Greek drama had been especially difficult to develop, as I’ve explained in earlier posts, but ultimately ended up following a girl who lost her father in an avalanche on the other side of the globe when she was only 11. She then continues on into her emotional recovery and growth, rounding out in her mid-30s.
By the time the book appeared in both digital and print-on-demand options at Amazon, the cover image had settled on a photo of a Goth girl.
For technical reasons, she continues at Amazon, while my cover at other digital retailers got updated.
I wanted a better sense of the initial suffering, or even an edginess in her development, but nothing worked perfectly. I am still taken with the daring in her stare at the camera, but is that enough? (I did a post about the earlier covers on December 20, 2019, should you want to explore my archives. I was quite fond of the first cover, the one with its falling egg yoke, but nobody else seemed to get the connection.)
The figure appears more ambiguous in my attempt to do something more in line with some of the Young Adult covers I saw. Ultimately, this was a mistake.
Furthermore, she’s genetically a mix of Greek and American Midwest and a tad on the pudgy side. I hate it when a story follows, say, a brunette but the cover shows an obviously dyed blonde.
Another challenge involved balancing the two words of the title. The second word, “Left,” should have the emphasis, but it’s only half the size of “What’s.” Nothing I tried corrected that. In many of the typefaces I sampled, “Left” simply didn’t read easily, either. It could have been “Lest” or “Lett” on first reading. In making a sales pitch, there’s no time for deciphering the message. “What’s” presented similar challenges in other typefaces.
The text had been difficult enough to nail down in a convincing voice, but the cover was equally problematic – especially finding an appropriate image. How do you summarize all this in a single graphic impression, especially one that works thumbnail size online?
Do note, there’s an ongoing argument about using a facial image on a cover, period. Does it grip a potential reader or does it turn one away? Will it even limit a reader’s impressions of the character at the heart of the book?
At last I had a photo that more or less captures her despair. The title and author presentation never quite matched.
Remember, my budget wasn’t generous enough for a graphic designer, the kind who would create a flowing dust jacket replete with insider clues for a potential reader. I’m not particularly fond of those designs anyway. In general, I think photos pack more punch in a first impression. Just look at magazines at a newsstand. Remember those?
Cassia, or more formally Acacia, goes into mourning after her father’s death and then morphs into Goth dress and appearance through her teenage years, where much of the story develops.
The book doesn’t fall neatly into genres – part of it could be Young Adult, but I’d say the core of it is New Adult and beyond. So how old should she look on the cover?
Finally, in the latest stab at this problem, I decided to run with an image I’d settled on earlier. This time, it would bleed off the cover at both sides for maximum impact. I then decided to run it off the bottom, too. Somehow, that left the photo square, a format her photographer father pursued.
At last, we have this.
My reason for cropping the photo tighter was to give it more depth, putting the focus more fully on the girl and her emotion. I’m now seeing that the rocky background I eliminated had actually suggested another kind of story. No more of that distraction now. An artist might have replace it with her extended family, by the way.
In leaving the top open for author and title, rather than separating those elements with the photo in the middle, she has more presence and gravity.
I’m also glad I stuck with an impulsive decision to not fill in the remaining cover with a background color. A new typeface for me, Yu Gothic Semibold, seemed to work best for the title, though I’m not exactly happy with the single-stroke bar apostrophe. But “Left” carries its own weight in the dance of letters.
Book Antiqua, meanwhile, a fallback for me, does nicely in italic for the author.
That’s all – clean, simple, and somehow daring in its starkness. Without an obvious border, the design declares its independence from paperbook constrictions. It’s also quite contemporary, in a confident way. It even pops out on websites. And there’s no question that it comes together more harmoniously the one it replaces.
This one’s now available on your choice of ebook platforms at Smashwords.com and its affiliated digital retailers. Those outlets include the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, and Sony’s Kobo. You may also request the ebook from your local public library.
My novel What’s Left, was in no rush for completion, contrary to my own desires. Still, I wasn’t going to artificially pressure this one.
As for my personal surprises this time? Some of my favorite lines popped up while swimming my daily laps in the city’s indoor pool.
Here’s one of Cassia’s outbursts that almost prompted me to change the name of the novel itself:
Oh, my, am I torn! I’ll tell you this, though. Buddhism comes in very handy when other kids are giving you so much grief you threaten to cast a spell on them and break out chanting Su To Ka Yo Me Bha Wa repeatedly and then just watch them back away. Oh, I tell you, it’s so satisfying!
What’s that do?
You’ll find out. You better be good to toads.
You get lots of respect for doing that.
~*~
Which title Do you think’s better — “What’s Left” or “You Better Be Good to Toads”? Or have I overlooked something even better?
~*~
Think of it as a cool Christmas present for somebody really special. Available at the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Smashwords, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook distributors and at Amazon in both Kindle and paperback.
Much of my literary writing has attempted to capture the unique sense of particular landscapes, sometimes to the extent that the locale becomes a character of its own. Serious wine drinkers might see this as a matter of terroir, meaning distinctive local flavor.
In my novel What’s Left, I tried to avoid this touchstone but wound up developing the neighborhood around the family restaurant anyway.
In placing it in a college town in southern Indiana, I created an inside joke all the same. If you’re familiar with the region, you’ll know the Ohio River is much more than an hour from Indianapolis. The college town where she lives is defined by both, and thus in a site uniquely its own. If only it actually existed!
Still, I think the flavor is right.
~*~
I know I’m not alone here.
Tell me of a favorite book or movie where you think the location becomes a character in its own right. Let’s make this a long list!
~*~
There’s nothing quite like an American diner in Paris …
The ending of my novel What’s Left, is not the one I anticipated. Rather, it’s the one Cassia dictated to me as I was drafting. Believe me, it came as a surprise, but I trust her. It really feels fitting, from my perspective.
Up to that point I’d been thinking of swapping the placement of the last two chapters, ending with Rinpoche, the Tibetan teacher, telling Cassia of her father’s last moments and maybe setting her on a new lifetime pathway. Instead, her story concludes on a rainy Saturday morning as she converses with her best friend forever, her cousin Sandra.
Not that this should be a spoiler for you.
If you’ve ever lived in Indiana, you know how commonplace the rain is, especially on Saturdays, or so I remember. But this one is truly special.
~*~
It’s one thing to be writing and other to be reading or watching.
In reading a novel or watching a movie, have you ever felt a character wanted to go in an independent direction from the one the plot follows? Can you say why or which way you’d go?
~*~
My novel is available at the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Smashwords, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook distributors and at Amazon in both Kindle and paperback.
Growing up in the middle of America, I had little awareness of the extent of immigrant Greek influence in the New World, much less in my own hometown. These days, though, I see how pervasive — yet nearly invisible — it’s been, now or then.
My decision to have my first novel close with Cassia’s future father marrying into a Greek-American family was, in part, predicated on a desire to have his immersion in one ancient culture from Asia, Tibetan Buddhism, be countered by another from Western civilization, and thus Greece , blending both classical glories and some New Testament threads, which seemed appropriately symbolic.
It’s up to you to weigh in on how well it works in my novel What’s Left.
In the past decade, though, perhaps prompted by the annual community-wide festival our local Greek Orthodox church presents every Labor Day weekend, I’ve been connecting the dots and discovering how many Greek-Americans I’ve known over the years and how much the recent encounters have been enriching my own outlook.
As I wrote to one friend:
One thing that’s greatly surprised me is how little literature exists that relates the Greek-American experience. You’re too numerous to be so invisible. What’s up? Just look on your impact in Dover alone. Perhaps the best overall portrayal comes in Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex (a masterpiece, by the way), although the work is acclaimed mostly for its exploration of hermaphroditic genetics and identity. Along the way, he also does a knock-out job of nailing the Midwest where I grew up, another strand of literature that’s otherwise anemic. I am glad I’d finished the first draft of my new work before encountering his novel — he won the National Book Award and Oprah’s endorsement for good reasons. It could be too intimidating. Well, if he could go on to do such an insightful job with Quaker Meeting, as he does in his third novel, The Marriage Plot, maybe I’m not so out of line in venturing into yours. I hope. Oh, yes, I’m also glad I finished the draft before getting to connect the dots of your own family. You’d be ideal for the movie version.
~*~
Look around at the people you know. Tell us something (good, we hope) about someone of Greek descent.
~*~
I think she looks a lot like the young woman on the cover of the book, apart from Cassia’s Goth garb and makeup. Aphrodite, anyone?
Southern Indiana is a distinct subregion in the American Midwest, as I touch on in my novels Daffodil Uprising and What’s Left. Defined loosely as the third of the state south of Interstate 70 or the earlier National Road, U.S. 40, it’s hillier than the farmlands to the north, which had been leveled by glaciers back in the Ice Age. Besides, it was also heavily impacted by migration from the South, especially North Carolina and its Quaker stock fleeing a slaveholding culture.
Here are a few observations.
It gravitates toward the Ohio River and its border with Kentucky. Louisville is as influential as Indianapolis.
Much of it is forested and hilly, with Brown County as a kind of spiritual center. Many folks there live in log cabins. The county seat, Nashville, and the state park are tourist magnets. It was also influential in the development of bluegrass music, thanks to Bill Monroe and his festival at Bean Blossom.
The region is underlain with limestone and caves. In fact, its quarries are legendary, just look at the Empire State Building, Pentagon, and National Cathedral.
Evansville, on the Ohio River close to both Illinois and Kentucky, is the state’s third largest metropolitan area. Its impact is largely unseen.
Columbus is a showpiece for contemporary architecture, thanks to J. Irwin Miller and the Cummins company.
Terre Haute, on the Wabash River, is the birthplace of radical Eugene V. Debs. It has a liberal tradition.
Basketball great Larry Bird was born in West Baden Springs and played college in Terre Haute, after moving on from IU in Bloomington. Basketball, we should note, is a religion throughout the state.
Speaking of Bloomington. It’s the cultural and intellectual center of the state. Purdue up north prefers engineers and agricultural economists.
It has a different dialect from the rest of the state, linguistically.
Tornadoes are a distinct threat. On April 25, 2020, twisters killed 10 people in Bedford, 104 in Terre Haute, 48 in Mitchell, and 300 in Martinsville. Not your typical day.
Jnana's Red Barn 