BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE

UNTITLED -- reprinted from SENTENCED by Louis Phillips 
(World Audience Books) Available from Amazon


“I think a good title is obliged to exist at a more primitive 
level than clear exposition can provide.” Norman Mailer
 
      Titles! Without titles, how would we be able to identify 
the books we are reading or wish to read? Titles are to 
authors what naming babies are to parents. And sometimes 
what a problem choosing a title or a name is. I wonder –-
 what did Homer call his  epic poems? Did he originally call 
The Iliad  something catchy, such as  War and No Peace? 
Or was it simply known as  Homer’s Epic?
  Forgive me. I am merely wondering out loud what might 
have been  the first literary Work to bear a title? No matter 
the answer to that question it cannot be denied that giving 
a title to one’s artistic efforts  can be serious business indeed.
   Case in point:  On March 23, 1967, Norman Mailer wrote 
a letter to Walter Minton of Putnam’s Publishing House 
in which the author  defends the choice of a title for 
his book –--Why We Are in Vietnam:
  
I think the title will end up working for us. The blurb can 
start out  right away by saying, “Everyone who hears the 
title thinks that Norman Mailer a political article or a novel 
about Vietnam, but as you will soon discover, Vietnam is 
mentioned only once in the book, and then on the last page. 
Why then the title?   
The author doesn’t say, but one can assume that in this 
scandalous, ribald, hilarious and frightening account of a 
hunting expedition in the Brooks Mountain Range in Alaska 
etc., etc., Norman Mailer is saying, ‘This perhaps is what we 
Americans are like, and this may be one of the reasons we’re 
engaged in such a war.’ Perhaps Mailer is even drawing some 
parallels between the hunting down of animals and…but forget 
about the title, this book is going to knock you on your ass.
 
(see THE SELECTED LETTERS OF NORMAN MAILER, 
edited by J. Michael Lennon Random House, 2014
 
I find that one of the more revealing passages about how
 much weight some titles can bear.
 
     Playwrights too have struggled to express their
 understanding of their own works through the choice
 of a title that might also attract an audience. On March
 11, 2015, Erik Piepenburg wrote an article for the
 New York Times - What I Almost Called My Play: 
 Writers on the  Titles They Didn’t Use. In that article,
 Bathesheba Dawn  explained why she abandoned
 her original title “What  Is Not”:
 
 
I was in the middle of writing the play and I was at a 
gala. I sat next to this lovely lady who said the play 
“Bad Jews” sold out in previews. I never considered 
the idea of a title as a marketing tool, ever. I said, 
“I’m working on a new play and it’s called ‘What Is Not.’ ” 
She held up her hand in front of my face and said: 
“No, don’t do it to yourself! You cannot call your play 
that.” I went to bed and woke up and I turned to my wife 
and said, “I’m going to call it “Love & Sex.” I called 
a friend whom I trust, and she said “ ‘Love & Sex’ is a 
magenta title, but there is nothing magenta a
bout your writing. Your writing is very green, and 
‘The Mystery of Love & Sex’ is dark green.” I never 
doubted it after she said that.
 
 I wonder if Shakespeare did much soul searching 
when it cameto titling his plays for presentation at 
the Globe Theater. Titles such  as Hamlet, Othello, 
and King Lear seem very forthright.Nothing fancy 
there. Playwright Sarah Ruhl has noticed that
 
    Tragedy is often named for the tragic person –
King Lear, Hamlet, Julius Caesar – Whereas comedies 
draw from the world at large -–As you Like It, The 
Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
 Tragedy has proper nouns, and comedy has regular 
old nouns that signify the world and the structure of
 the world over and above the  individual.
 
(Sarah Ruhl. 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write,
 (Faberand Faber, Inc. 2014)
 
   Perhaps it is also worth noting that comedies, 
because they provide us with a double vision of 
the human situation  –-the discrepancy between 
what we aspire to be and what we 
truly are – sometimes   carry subtitles: Twelfth Night, or  
What You Will.
 
 Of course, authors can be passionate about their titles
 choices, but publishers and financial considerations about
 sales often have a say in the matter. Many readers of  The
Great Gatsby, of course, are familiar with the fact that F.
 Scott Fitzgerald originally  considered calling it Trimalchio
 in West Egg, one title among several that passed through
 his head. It may seem  obvious now that any book called
Trimalchio  in West Egg will not sell very well.
 
Unfortunately, The Great Gatsby didn’t too much for sales
 either. Frequently Fitzgerald would steal into bookstores
 to purchase copies of his own book to improve his  sales’
 record.
 
          Here are a few other original titles for well-known
books (most, I think, for the better):
 
         Twilight – The Sound and the Fury
         The Chronic Argonaut – The Time Machine
         The Sea-Cook – Treasure Island
          Tomorrow is Another Day – Gone With the Wind
          First Impressions --       Pride and Prejudice
          The Village Virus – Main Street
 
       And so on.* Such lists merely show how important 
revising and rewriting and rethinking are. Sometimes  
titles have to be changed because of the pressure of 
current events.  In 2010,


It’s because of Frank Sinatra that we use the phrase 
“Catch-22” today. Well, sort of. Author Joseph Heller 
tried out Catch-11, but because the original Ocean’s 
Eleven movie was newly in theaters, it was scrapped 
to avoid confusion. He also wanted Catch-18, but, again, 
a recent publication made him switch titles
 to avoid confusion: Leon Uris’ Mila 18. The number 22 
was finally chosen because it was 11 doubled.
 
The Book of Lists 2 gives a slightly different version of
 the above story of origin, and James Campbell,
 reviewing Gary Dexter’s Why Not Catch-21? For TLS
 (September 21, 2007) wrote “The title of Dexter’s book
 refers to Joseph Heller’s arithmetic. Conceived as Catch-l8. 
his novel sank to Catch 11, caught up a bit by becoming 
Catch l4, before making the decisive leap to Catch 22.”
 

But titles being what they are, not all titles are correct and 
some present other problems of interpretation. For example, 
as Christopher Hitchens pointed out in Hitch 22 (a title that
 is itself an allusion to Catch 22) that “ It is characteristic 
of Martin (Amis) to have pointed out that Dickens’ title 
Our Mutual Friend contains, or is, a solecism. One can 
have a common friend but not mutual ones.
    Titles are sometimes misinterpreted. For example,
Colin Fleming  once had a professor who believed
 that the impressive titular number of 20,000  Leagues
 Under the Sea referred  to oceanic depth, rather than
 distance traveled. Many a reader has made the same
 mistake.
 
++

TITLES
 
It’s (QUEEN AND COUNTRY)  a slightly ironic title, obviously, 
and I wanted one which had a bit of a ring that associated it 
with Hope and Glory. And the Queen coming to the throne 
was quite an important part element of the story. Skiving was 
my original title – but I was dissuaded, because Americans 
wouldn’t know the word, and nobody knew how to translate 
it into other languages.
 
John Boorman in Sight and Sound (July, 2015)
 
 
In looking over an autumn catalogue, we came across a series 
of books for young persons in which we were struck by the titles 
When Mother Let Us Help and When Mother Lets Us Cook. We trust 
the series will be extended along these lines. If so, we intend 
to use as gifts for H. 3rd, When Father Lets Me Stoke the Furnace, 
When Father Lets Me Shine His Shoes, and When Father Lets Me
Lend Him Money.
 
Heywood Broun
 
 
 
(Woody) Allen’s working title for Annie Hall was  “Anhedra”  
a term coined by the French psychologist Theodule –Armand 
Ribaud to describe “the inability to experience pleasure from 
actions usually found enjoyable.”
 
Philip Fiens. (??) “Woody’s Blues” in TLS
(October 4, 2013).
 
 
What’s Up, Tiger Lily (the discreet comma was not always in the title)…
New Yorker. “Goings on About Town” (September 3,1973
 
 
I once had a professor who believed that the impressive titular 
number of 20,000  Leagues Under the Sea referred  to oceanic 
depth, rather than distance traveled.
 
   Colin Fleming
 

 
Mr. Inge’s title (THE DARK AT THE TOP OF THE TOP STAIRS) 
is meant to suggest that there is inevitably a certain amount 
of darkness ahead for all of us as we climb our weary way to 
Heaven, but his play contains the reassuring message that a 
good many of the terrors infesting the gloom are imaginary and 
that the real ones can usually be defeated if we can only meet 
them hand in hand.
 
Wolcott Gibbs. Reviewing  William Inge’s play
For The New Yorker (December 14, 1957)

 
Why it is an absolute fantasy. Even the title doesn’t exist:
 there is no such reading on a compass as north by northwest.

Alfred Hitchcock
 
 
It is characteristic of Martin (Amis) to have pointed out that 
Dickens’ title Our Mutual Friend contains, or is, a
Solecism. One can have a common friend but not 
mutual ones.
 
Christopher Hitchens. Hitch 22 (a title that is 
a punning reference to Catch 22.
 
 
 Don Juan in Hull
 
  Title of an essay by Clive James  about the poet Philip Larkin
 
**
 
The title of Dexter’s book refers to Joseph Heller’s arithmetic.
 Conceived as Catch-l8. his novel sank to Catch 11, caught up 
a bit by becoming Catch l4, before making the decisive leap 
to Catch 22.
 
James Campbell, reviewing Gary Dexter’s Why Not Catch-21? 
for TLS (September 21, 2007)
 
**
 
SHEILA LEVINE IS DEAD AND LIVING IN
NEW YORK (1975)]
 
If  the title were not meant to be satiric or witty, but merely an 
unerringly accurate description of the film’s content and mood,
 then it is the only thing about the movie that works.
 
William K. Everson in Films in Review (March 1975)
 

 
If you think the title (“A BEAUTIFUL LIFE”) stinks, try the movie.
 
    Anthony Lane
 
**
 
“Now listen, he (Herman Levin) said, “we’ve got to have a title.
 People have to know the name of what they have seen so they 
can tell their friends to go see it!” His logic was irrefutable, 
“Call it anything,” he went on.“you can always change it on 
the road. After all when Oklahoma opened it was Away We Go.” 
“Why don’t we just take the title we dislike the least ,” I suggested. 
There was a collective, apathetic nod. After a brief summary 
of all the candidates, we decided the title we found the least 
indigestible was My Fair Lady, and with a helpless  shrug we 
agreed to it. A few months later we all thought it was brilliant 
-–except Fritz (composer Frederick Loewe), who still liked 
‘fanfaroon.’


Alan Jay Lerner. The Street Where I Live.
 (W.W.Norton Company, 1968). Herman Levin was
The producer of the theater musical My Fair Lady.
 
 When Browning published  series of eight volumes of poems
 in the six years preceding his  marriage, he called them 
Bells and Pomengranates. He thought everyone would 
immediately understand the significance of the title and 
nobody did, Finally he explained  that by “Bells” he meant 
sound and by “Pomengranates” he meant  sense; and that 
the two words together signified the union in good poetry 
of music and meat, or sound and sense.”
 
William Lyon Phelps. Yearbook.
 (New York: The Macmillan Company,1935. P.14.
 
    ON GETTING THE RIGHT TITLE
   FOR A MYSTERY NOVEL
    
     On my Christmas Holiday
     I decided to read a mystery by Brett Halliday --
     Murder and the Married Virgin with Mike Shayne.
    It’s a title I can’t get out of my brain.
 
     LJP
 
**
 
Queenie’s Whim is a title I cannot forget. It is the title of 
a novel I do not expect or want to read. The novel was 
by Rosa Nonchette Carey, whose readers must now be 
fewer than they were.
 
 William Plomer. Electric Delights
 
Some years later, he ( Jeffrey  Farnol) wrote The Amateur Gentleman – a rather curious title, for could there be a professional gentleman?
 
William Lyon Phelps. Yearbook. (New York: The Macmillan Company,1935. P.14.
 
In the reference room of the  old Donnell Library in Manhattan 
there was once a one-volume reference book titled INDEX TO WOMEN. 
It’s a title that gives me great pleasure and one that invokes 
numerous fantasies, The full title is INDEX TO WOMEN OF THE WORLD 
FROM ANCIENT TO MODERN TIMES: BIOGRAPHIES AND PORTRAITS  
by Norma Olin Ireland.
 
Louis Phillips
 
 
He (GORE VIDAL) once joked to me that he meant to call his first memoir An Actor Prepares, cadging the title from Stanislavski. Instead, he called it Palimpsest , ‘a word that no one will no,’ he said. ‘But then it’s a life nobody will know, particularly after reading the book.”
 
Michael Mewshaw. Sympathy For the Devil.
 
 
 
     Why “Dangerous Turns”? Because in many of  my novels 
the characters – family, couple, or  isolated individuals  -- 
suddenly find themselves facing an event that will change 
their destinies. Had I not had Maigret dream of a profession 
that, unfortunately, does not exist, that of “Mender of Destinies.
 
Georges Simenon. – Intimate Memories 
(Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984)
 
 
 **

MOAT
 
“Man who builds castles in the air; fantasizer,”

Somedays I feel like a toad in mudwort.
But I am at an age now
Where I no longer care
About building castles in the air.
What I worry about now is the moat.

Louis Phillips