Happy Belated 113th Birthday, Jose Luis Borges

The last two weeks have been for me a flurry of activity, with the start of a new school year and the hours of preparation; the finding of my sea legs is still in progress. Also, a huge editing job landed in my lap, so the weekly post didn't happen last week. I even overlooked all my Google Reader feeds, which I manage to check, if not daily, at least every two days or so.  I don't share much poetry here, because I don't want to fall into the trap of the quick-and-dirty copypaste blog post. But this week I'm making an exception.

So, happy belated 113th birthday (August 24) to Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges.

You Learn

After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,

And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
And company doesn’t mean security.

And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
And presents aren’t promises,

And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,

And you learn to build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans
And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.

After a while you learn…
That even sunshine burns if you get too much.

So you plant your garden and decorate your own soul,
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

And you learn that you really can endure…

That you really are strong

And you really do have worth…

And you learn and learn…

With every good-bye you learn.

This poem was inscribed on the inside cover of many a girl's notebook in my high school. Before the interwebs, this was our version of "going viral."

"The Great American Novel": My humble (of course!) opinion

A couple of years ago, the question, "Which American novels would you recommend to a European who is trying to understand American literature and the American experience?"  was asked on a message board of an online book community. Suggestions were for the usual touchstones--Hawthorne, Melville, Faulkner, Steinbeck,  Vonnegut, et. al. One person suggested some dystopian fiction. Some even suggested Ayn Rand. Though she wasn't born here, she resonated, and continues to do so, with American narcissists and pseudo-intellectuals.If there is an afterlife, I'm betting Sartre, Descartes, and Socrates aren't inviting her for coffee. "Life's too short to read bad books." Unless you get huge giggles from trashing them.

So, here are my picks for Great American Novels, by time period, using the criteria above:

Can an artist and a brand co-exist peacefully in the same writer?

Once upon a time, aspiring authors were advised to simply hone their craft, work hard, try and try again, rewrite, submit their manuscripts, deal with rejection, dig deep to find the great story ideas, and eventually they'd get an agent, a book deal, an audience. In the past few years, however, they have also been advised to work on creating a "brand" so people will buy their books. The reasoning behind this is that an author is like a small business, and with so many options for being published, with so much competition among writers, creating a logo or a theme, and, in some cases, sticking to a specific genre as part of your "brand" is going to increase your visibility in a very crowded marketplace.

There are authors who publish under several names, creating a "brand" for each one:  giving their romance-writing persona a lyrical name like Lydia des Rosiers, their historical-fiction writing one a German or Anglo-Saxon or Celtic or name like Michael McCorrigan, their suspense-writing persona something similarly laden with plosives. Their mystery/suspense/thriller persona might even have a Balto-Slavic surname full of Z's and K's. They finally write a memoir or literary fiction under their own name.

The idealist in me wants to believe that if my writing is good enough, I won't need a logo or a tagline: "Creator of deep and poignant literary fiction"  "Author of thrilling mystery-suspense"; I think a good one for me might be"Welcome to my weird world" Or something.

There are so many articles out there, I can't possibly digest them all for you, so here are a few.  Read and weep--or take heed.  Your choice.

Here's one from the NY Times.
And one from a blog stating how essential branding is.
One from Writer's Digest.
And. . . .Cue my snark machine:  Building your brand in FIVE EASY STEPS! (can I get a Whoo Hoo!) (sorry folks-- I can't believe it could be this easy, okay?)

Finally, a dissenting opinion and apparently in the minority.

Is Bruce Springsteen a brand? I don't think so. Kurt Vonnegut?  No way.  In fact, I think I just heard him turn over in his grave. I'm sorry, but I still want to believe that someone who works hard to create great stories and pays his or her dues can succeed without hiring a marketing consultant. Or is that crazy talk? Should I wake up and smell the corporate coffee?