Titles

Titles to novels are almost harder to write than the novel itself. This isn’t apparent from the point of view of the reader. On my desk, I can see Terry Southern’s ‘Candy’, Philip Roth’s ‘Zuckerman Unbound’, and Graham Greene’s ‘The Heart of the Matter’. Each title exists, in my mind at least, as though they are integral to the novels they represent. When I think of the book. I think of the title.

As a reader, you know the title before you know the book. As a writer, you often come to know the book long before you know its title. I have spent days thinking up a title for a story I’m in the middle of completing. Nothing seems right but then, the book is still a series of problems I have yet to overcome. Finding the title transforms the story (or a series of written pages) into something more imposing. It gives the manuscript an identity. It’s like putting the roof on a house. Until that point, it wasn’t a house but a series of walls, abutments, and foundations. I want to give these pages an identity as a book but perhaps it’s too early. I’m still standing in the foundations wondering if this thing will ever get built.