that big-textured names let the characters introduce themselves (Rosa Bud, Bumble, Anne Chickenstalker, Lady Dedlock, Mr. Grimwig, Bradley Headstone, Krook, Charity Pecksniff, Chevy Slyme, M’Choakumchild), and thank you very much but whose “Scrooge” made its way into everyday usage and earned even the right to be lowercased?
Charity auctions have named a few of my characters. As I was writing my fifth novel, the PTA at my son’s high school asked author John Katzenbach and me if we’d be willing to name a character in our next books after the two high bidders. We both said sure. The Katzenbach item, with its unstated bonus of an echo on the big screen, went first to furious bidding. Then the Lipman item: a friend at my table bid and was countered by a voice across the room. Back and forth, a few unheated rounds. Who’s my winner? I asked when it was over. “He hasn’t identified himself,” said the woman collecting the money. A few weeks later, the wife of the high bidder squealed. It was John Katzenbach, winner on a mercy bid. (See
The Ladies’ Man,
p. 197: the law firm of Dobbin, McLendon, Katzenbach, and Jessep.) Top honors for most creative use of an auctioned-off name goes to Anita Shreve, who was obliged to honor the high bid from a family with an unwieldy name. A few chapters into
A Wedding in December,
set at an inn in the Berkshires, Shreve discharges her obligation with a sign in the lobby announcing, “Karola-Jungbacker rehearsal dinner, Pierce Room, 7:00.”
Particularly nice is the reader who detects meanings that escape the author. A book group member asked me if I’d deliberately given Dwight Willamee’s sister Lorraine, in
Then She Found Me,
the name of a Teutonic goddess to underscore the tensions between the German-American family and the Jewish narrator. “Actually not,” I replied. “I named Lorraine after Lorraine Loviglio, a dear coworker at my last job.”
Recently, a lit major asked if I’d purposely nicknamed Conrad (
The Way Men Act
) “Con” because of the archaic meaning of that French vulgarism, i.e., “consolation of the lower parts,” and its modern meaning (unprintable), which she found altogether fitting since Conrad meant nothing more to my narrator than the occasional horizontal encounter.
I wrote back, and I told the truth. “Dear Reader: I didn’t know I knew, but perhaps I did.”
It Was a Dark and Stormy Nosh
I WRITE NOVELS AND I cook dinner, and some days the edges blur. Like me, my characters know their way around a kitchen, and like my family, they are good eaters. Increasingly my plots thicken in restaurants, as waiters hover, and increasingly readers ask, “What’s with the food in your books?”
My answer is, doesn’t
everyone
characterize people by what they eat? Isn’t it another descriptive tool, like a story’s furniture or its clothes? It seems so, well . . . easy—the dialogue balloon next to a character’s plate, an arrow pointing to his or her true self. For example: Let’s say I want to sketch an ordinary Joe. Following the first law of writing fiction—showing rather than telling—I don’t announce that Joe is unadventurous, prosaic, even dull, but I signal it by having him eat . . . what? (a) Sweetbreads on a bed of polenta? (b) Orange roughy? (c) Ramps? (d) Franks and beans? Or: A fictional man takes a seemingly appealing woman on a first date. He orders rotisserie chicken and garlic mashed potatoes (friendly, unpretentious, all-American yet bistro chic). Over her bottled water, the woman can’t decide. She asks if the chef can make the risotto without fat, or leave the Gorgonzola out of the Gorgonzola vinaigrette. The reader recognizes the woman to be (a) on a diet; (b) difficult; (c) anorexic; (d) no fun; (e) all of the above.
After creating many characters who are unabashed eaters, finally I went all the way and made my heroine a chef. In
The Inn at Lake Devine
food owes its allegiance to two schools: Vermont cuisine
Charity auctions have named a few of my characters. As I was writing my fifth novel, the PTA at my son’s high school asked author John Katzenbach and me if we’d be willing to name a character in our next books after the two high bidders. We both said sure. The Katzenbach item, with its unstated bonus of an echo on the big screen, went first to furious bidding. Then the Lipman item: a friend at my table bid and was countered by a voice across the room. Back and forth, a few unheated rounds. Who’s my winner? I asked when it was over. “He hasn’t identified himself,” said the woman collecting the money. A few weeks later, the wife of the high bidder squealed. It was John Katzenbach, winner on a mercy bid. (See
The Ladies’ Man,
p. 197: the law firm of Dobbin, McLendon, Katzenbach, and Jessep.) Top honors for most creative use of an auctioned-off name goes to Anita Shreve, who was obliged to honor the high bid from a family with an unwieldy name. A few chapters into
A Wedding in December,
set at an inn in the Berkshires, Shreve discharges her obligation with a sign in the lobby announcing, “Karola-Jungbacker rehearsal dinner, Pierce Room, 7:00.”
Particularly nice is the reader who detects meanings that escape the author. A book group member asked me if I’d deliberately given Dwight Willamee’s sister Lorraine, in
Then She Found Me,
the name of a Teutonic goddess to underscore the tensions between the German-American family and the Jewish narrator. “Actually not,” I replied. “I named Lorraine after Lorraine Loviglio, a dear coworker at my last job.”
Recently, a lit major asked if I’d purposely nicknamed Conrad (
The Way Men Act
) “Con” because of the archaic meaning of that French vulgarism, i.e., “consolation of the lower parts,” and its modern meaning (unprintable), which she found altogether fitting since Conrad meant nothing more to my narrator than the occasional horizontal encounter.
I wrote back, and I told the truth. “Dear Reader: I didn’t know I knew, but perhaps I did.”
It Was a Dark and Stormy Nosh
I WRITE NOVELS AND I cook dinner, and some days the edges blur. Like me, my characters know their way around a kitchen, and like my family, they are good eaters. Increasingly my plots thicken in restaurants, as waiters hover, and increasingly readers ask, “What’s with the food in your books?”
My answer is, doesn’t
everyone
characterize people by what they eat? Isn’t it another descriptive tool, like a story’s furniture or its clothes? It seems so, well . . . easy—the dialogue balloon next to a character’s plate, an arrow pointing to his or her true self. For example: Let’s say I want to sketch an ordinary Joe. Following the first law of writing fiction—showing rather than telling—I don’t announce that Joe is unadventurous, prosaic, even dull, but I signal it by having him eat . . . what? (a) Sweetbreads on a bed of polenta? (b) Orange roughy? (c) Ramps? (d) Franks and beans? Or: A fictional man takes a seemingly appealing woman on a first date. He orders rotisserie chicken and garlic mashed potatoes (friendly, unpretentious, all-American yet bistro chic). Over her bottled water, the woman can’t decide. She asks if the chef can make the risotto without fat, or leave the Gorgonzola out of the Gorgonzola vinaigrette. The reader recognizes the woman to be (a) on a diet; (b) difficult; (c) anorexic; (d) no fun; (e) all of the above.
After creating many characters who are unabashed eaters, finally I went all the way and made my heroine a chef. In
The Inn at Lake Devine
food owes its allegiance to two schools: Vermont cuisine
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