I Like Generic Novel Titles
After a conversation with a friend last week about my novel-in-progress, I came up with a working title for it and ran it by her. She agreed that the title was “apt” but thought it “a little too generic.” I’ve gotten this comment about a lot of my titles, which in recent years have tended toward broad concepts expressed in very few words—Mailman, Castle. (The working title in question, incidentally, is Ghosts.)
I don’t think my friend is wrong. But I’d argue that genericness is a valid choice for a title, particularly a novel title. I’m thinking of Coetzee’s Disgrace, or Rushdie’s Shame, or Robinson’s Housekeeping, or Morrison’s Beloved. Philip Roth’s late work has embraced the generic: Indignation, Nemesis, Everyman. (Everyman!) These are good titles, in my view, because they rather boldly colonize a broad concept. They speak of a certain kind of confidence. I can appreciate the cover-clogging independent-clause titles of, say, O’Connor (Everything that Rises Must Converge) or my friend Brian Hall (I Would Be Extremely Happy in your Company); these are immediately striking and original. But I’m probably in the minority thinking that Carver’s best title is not What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (which feels like a cold sore on my tongue every time I’m forced to say it), but Cathedral. Cathedral, Ray? Do tell.
A good generic title is a vessel into which meaning can be poured, by both the writer and reader. (My favorite of my own titles—by a wide margin—is Familiar, because it connotes so much that that novel attempts to address: the family, of course; the uncanny; the notion of a magical companion, a familiar.) Away from its antecedent, the generic title goes unnoticed; it’s something anyone might say, at any time. But once it is in place on the book cover, gravitational lines bend towards it. The generic title doesn’t try to impress you—it tries to indicate that the book itself will impress you.
Of course, the problem with the generic title is that, if the book sucks, then the title sucks. Ulysses is a great title, but only for Ulysses. Lolita would be a terrible title for a book that wasn’t Lolita. The generic title is an invitation to failure—it won’t redeem a bad novel. (Not that a clever title will, but at least it’ll look good on your bookshelf.) No, the generic title invites you to throw away the dust jacket. It’s a revolt against the very notion of titling—any summary of this work, it seems to say, is futile. So here, have a word to chew on.
In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that I’m notionally fond of untitled works, which are quite common in visual art and music (where we always feel compelled to invent nicknames, which then become the “real” titles in people’s minds—the “White Album,” Led Zeppelin IV). There aren’t many untitled novels out there, though, if any. Maybe that’s where I’m headed. First I’ll drop down to one syllable, in defiance of my friend, and then, in a few years, one letter (Pynchon and Tom McCarthy have already claimed V and C, alas). And at last I shall issue my masterpiece: , a novel by J. Robert Lennon.
