Unexpected Applause: The Fourth Wish

My latest Unexpected Applause piece is The Fourth Wish by Elizabeth Varadan. Along with my own views on the book, I am going to add in my younger son's (middle child), since he fits the target audience. And he's having a different experience with the book than I did, so I think it will provide a more rounded picture. Just a note about my son (for those of you that may have missed me talking about this stuff previously): he's the most well-read 10-year-old I've ever known (or heard of). It's not just that he reads a lot (he does), but he's very eclectic in his reading choices. He's read Kafka (how many adults can say that?), Dumas, and RL Stevenson (more Stevenson than me, actually). He's also read Eddings, Douglas Adams, and (currently) Zahn. All of that to say that his view is worthwhile not just because he's in the target audience but because he has a good spread of prior reading material to base it on.

Let's deal with the technical stuff first. Grammar and editing. Fun. But it wasn't too bad. Especially for a piece that wasn't done professionally. The biggest (real) issue is that there are places where there's a word missing here and there. Those always throw me. [I can't complain about this too much, though, as I know of at least one spot in The House on the Corner where I have a missing word (actually, it's just a missing letter, but it changes the word. So far, no one else seems to have noticed).] It can be a hard job to catch all of those things in your own work, and, overall, it's not too bad. There are some comma errors, especially when the author chose to begin a sentence with a conjunction and follow it immediately with a comma when there wasn't a dependent clause present, i.e. "But, I wanted to." When there is just the one independent clause following a conjunction, a comma should not be there. This is one of those pet peeves I have, so I found those annoying. Still, as the only real (consistent) grammar error in the book, I can't complain about that one, either (I mean, more than I am). The only other issue is the author's use of question marks in many places when the sentence is not interrogative. I actually asked her about these, and she said they were purposeful, to show the inflection of the speaker, but I found them more confusing than anything. [I'm waiting to see how my son reacts to them as they are more prominent toward the end of the book, and he is still shy of half.] If I was grading the book (which I sort of am), I'd give it a B on its technical merits, which is pretty good, I'd say.

The story is where I ran into some problems. But, then, it may just be a function of being about 30 years past the target audience. I was unable to engage with the story and the characters. My son, however, is fully engaged. This is one of those stories where the status quo becomes disturbed, and the characters spend the rest of the story trying to put things back the way they were. Possibly, while learning a lesson or two along the way. Mostly about appreciating what you have or being satisfied with your circumstances because they're not as bad as they could be. The vehicle for this is wishes...

I'll make an example of the magic show at the beginning of the book. Once the first wish is made, I found the magic show to be predictable and cliche, but my son loved it. And I don't really want to give any of it away, so I'll leave it at that.

I suppose I'll just say what didn't work for me:

The second wish seemed to just arbitrarily fail. Yes, the wish was supposed to fail so that things good get more messed up, but, really, it wasn't significantly different from wish that fixed everything, so that bothered me.

Daisy's Doughnuts. The whole place just seemed to be yanked out of the 50s, so it just didn't seem right to me. Plus, the kids, inexplicably, bring Christmas gifts to "Daisy;" although, they don't seem to have any special relationship with her that would warrant that.

Speaking of Christmas, the revelation that it is Christmas comes quite a bit farther into the book than I was comfortable with. It took me by surprise, and I had to readjust my view of what was going on in the story.

There's no real motivation for several of the primary characters. At least, none that I could fathom. Especially for Mrs. Seraphina.

And what did work for me:

The relationship between Arthur and Cory and the way they interact with Melanie (even if there wasn't a reason behind the whole "Scorpion Queen" thing (sorry, but that's the kind of nickname you want to know where it came from)).

Melanie's diary and her collection of postcards from her dad.

The struggle of a single mom trying to raise her kids while she's off working all the time and the pressure that puts on the oldest child.

Mostly, though, the story just never came together for me. Not that it was a struggle to read (I mean, there were no feelings of dread any time I stepped near the book like there was with that Turtledove novel I talked about a while back); it wasn't. I just felt like I was back where I started from when I finished and that nothing significant had happened. Now, that may not actually be true if there is to be a sequel, but, as it is, nothing significant happened.

But! See, my son, he likes the book. When I gave it to him, I just told him to read the first few chapters to see what he thought about it. I sort of expected him to give the book back to me and tell me he didn't like it. But, instead, when I asked him about it, he said, "I like it. You're not... you're not going to take it back, are you?" Because it's my book, and he thought I was only letting him read three chapters. It made me laugh. But the book is laying next to his bed, and, I'm sure he'd be finished with it already if he wasn't reading two other books when I gave it to him.

All of that to get to the point:

I think this is probably an above average middle grade book as long as you're one of those middle graders. From an adult perspective, I see it as a pretty typical story, and it didn't thrill me, but my son thinks it's a lot of fun. I'd certainly recommend it for anyone in the 8-12 range. As far as I can tell, it ought to appeal fairly equally to boys and girls. It has a female lead, but my son is enjoying it just fine, so I don't think the central female character is too off-putting for boys.

For a comprehensive grade, I'd give it a C+ to a B-. Currently, I'm leaning toward the C+, but that could change based on my son's final evaluation. Heck, if my daughter likes it, it could go up to a B. At any rate, if you have or know kids that like to read and are in the age range, it's a book worth checking out. If nothing else, it should be fun for them.

And then you can listen to them go on about how to go about getting 5 ka-billion doughnuts for themselves!

Kafka and the Metamorphosis of the Publishing Industry

Before I get started, by show of hands, how many of you have read Kafka? Any Kafka? Okay, yeah, that's what I thought. Before you feel bad, I haven't read as much Kafka as I'd like. In fact, I've only read The Metamorphosis, but it did leave me wanting to read more by him; I  just haven't gotten to it, yet. Unfortunately, Kafka is not someone I studied in school even with a degree in English focused on literature.

Also, before I get started, and this is something you'll want to remember for a later post, although I probably won't refer back to it, I got turned onto reading Kafka by my, then, 9-year-old son. Yes, my middle child has already been reading such things as Kafka, and he started that at 9. He learned about Kafka in The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones and decided he wanted to read something by him, so we bought him The Metamorphosis which he actually enjoyed even though he found it a bit odd. For those of you with kids, Young Indiana is a great show to invest in. Not only is it Indiana Jones, but it's full of historical accuracy, and the DVDs are loaded with documentaries about the history presented in the episodes.

Now the warning, there are going to be spoilers from The Metamorphosis. However, that should not spoil any reading of the work, because reading Kafka is more about the experience of reading Kafka rather than knowing what's going to happen in the story. It's  the difference between, when cold, looking at a coat and knowing that, if you put it on, you'll be warm and actually putting it on. It doesn't matter how long you look at it (how much you know in advance), looking at it will never make you warmer. Only the experience of putting it on (actually reading Kafka) will make you warmer.

In short, The Metamorphosis is about a guy that wakes up one morning to discover that he's turned into some insectoid monster. He doesn't know what to do about this, because he is the sole means of support for his family: his parents and sister. Basically, they never leave the small apartment they all share, and he's worried about how everyone will survive if he can no longer work. Although he has frequently felt overly burdened by his family, he also takes a perverse pride in his ability to keep all of them dependent on him and has done his best, over the years, to foster that dependence. However, his new condition has left all of that in chaos.

There's also the complication that he doesn't want anyone to see what he's become, and with good reason. When his family does finally see him, they are disgusted and drive him into hiding in his room. They are forced, now, to care for and support him. The family suffers a reversal, now feeling burdened by taking care of the bug creature that had once supported them. They take in lodgers in an effort to support everyone, since the sister has never worked and the parents haven't worked in years. This, of course, complicates everything as they have to take care of the bug while keeping him hidden from the people living in the house.

Eventually, the other family members must seek out employment and learn to become functioning members of society again. The bug takes their place in the dark, driving them out into the light. In the end, the sister states that the bug must not really be her brother, because, if it was, it would go away and not burden them so. Hearing this, the bug decides that she is correct. If he loves them, he will not inflict himself upon them any longer, and he chooses to allow himself to die, freeing them to pursue their own lives, although they have already decided to abandon him.

Now, I disagree with the general, surface interpretation of this work, so I'm not going to go into it. I'll just say that Kafka is a much debated subject in literary circles (not that he is much debated, but when he comes up, it is with disagreement and debate, so he's much debated). Most of his works are interpreted on a very surface level, although there are a number of scholars that have endeavored to interpret him based on a more holistic view of his life that often disagree with the more convenient views on Kafka's works. Oh, and to make it worse, Kafka very often intentionally used ambiguous wording.

At this point, I bet y'all are looking at the title of this post and wondering what any of this has to do with publishing and the publishing industry. Well, I'll tell you.

Once upon a time, way back in the infancy of publishing, writers were the driving force in the publishing world. Publishers were dependent upon writers as the son was dependent upon the parents. But the son grew up, and the roles changed. The son went to work to support the parents (and the sister (we'll call her agents, just for the sake of doing it)) and grew proud in his ability to do so to the point where he forced them all to become dependent upon him. He caused them to believe that they were incapable of surviving without him even to the point where they couldn't doing anything without him, even going outside. Everything they had came from him, and he made sure they knew it.

One day, though, the publishing industry woke up as a monstrous bug. This was horrifying and very difficult to come to grips with. It did its best to hide what had happened, and its authors and agents did their best to ignore the condition hoping everything would return to normal all on its own. Time passed, but the situation did not correct itself, and the large bug became more and more of a burden. This was especially true, because writers and agents had come to believe they were completely dependent upon the publishers.

This is where we are. The publishing industry has become this huge burden that everyone else needs to support in order to sustain it. It has become parasitic. No, it didn't start out that way, but that's what it's become.

Okay, I lied earlier. Here's the thing, most critics interpret The Metamorphosis based on the obvious assumption that the metamorphosis the title refers to is that of the son waking up as a bug. Everything is taken to be from the perspective of this poor young man who becomes shunned and abandoned by his family through no fault of his own. Although I believe this to be a perfectly valid interpretation, I think it's one that is too simplistic for Kafka. Remember how Kafka was intentionally ambiguous? I think this is one of those times. His writing often held a very obvious way of looking at things, but, if you looked a bit more, there was an alternate (or deeper) meaning. See, the story doesn't end with the bug's death. It goes on following the family and their emergence into the world much as a butterfly emerges from a cocoon. It is the metamorphosis of  the family that I believe the title is referring to. They have to learn to walk away from the bug and be their own people no longer tied to it.

The central moment of the book, the crux, is not the opening where the son wakes up as a bug but the moment when the daughter asserts that they have a choice: staying and supporting the bug which is killing them all or walking away from the bug and becoming. It's a scary step for the parents and the daughter, because they don't know what they'll become.

And, so, here we are. We writers. Digital technology has given us a choice. The choice to stand with the monstrous behemoth that is the traditional publishing industry, the thing that confines us and binds us into supporting it, the thing that lured us into dependence upon it or the choice to walk away and become. Agents have the same choice. Agents used to work for writers, after all, not publishers. They, also, don't have to be tied to the publishers. It's a scary place to be. I mean, maybe, just maybe, traditional publishing will figure out where they've made mistakes and take steps to change. To go back to supporting authors without demanding dependence. At the moment, I tend to doubt that. They still seem intent upon living off of the writers (and agents) that work for them.

Or writers can take that step. That step towards becoming. The step toward their own metamorphosis. Of becoming an independent entity. Stepping out into the light and making your own way is always difficult. There are risks. But it's living. Or, you know, we can choose to stay cooped up in the house and continue on the downward path of destruction with the large bug in the other room we're all trying to pretend isn't there.