Death by Redheads
Giving titles to your writing is a bit like knighting somebody. When you do it, the object of the knighting or the title-giving isn't intrinsically changed by the act; if the person's a jerk, he's still a jerk; if the writing stinks, it still stinks. However, what the title can do is make others take notice of something they might otherwise ignore, whether that something is an obscure person from Southern England or a boring book.
The best titles do several things simultaneously:
1. Arouse interest.
2. Encapsulate the story.
3. Include some kind of symbolism.
4. Become their own ideas.
I'm pretty good at coming up with titles for my own work. If nothing else, they're often intriguing. Usually they're based on a catchphrase or a line of dialogue, or they're "homages" to other creative works I admire. Here are a few of my favorite titles of short stories of mine, and the stories behind them:
TITLE: "I Hope You Boys Know What You're Doing"
STORY: My friend Carl and I were doing some "landscaping" for a 98-year-old woman, which basically meant we would cut down anything living. At one point, concerned that we weren't doing a very good job, the old woman shuffled out onto the porch and yelled, "I hope you boys know what you're doin'!" Here it is, from the collection of the same title, on Google Books: IHYBKWYD!
TITLE: "You'll Be Fucked for the Rest of Your Life"
STORY: This is an Al-ism. Al is my inimitable father, and I got this title from a time when he gave me the talk. I was in high school, going out with a senior from Vassar, and my father became concerned that I might get her pregnant. So, loaded up on vodka and tonic, and after having thrown the cat in the pool ("He can swim fine..."), Al said to me (in a thick Maine accent), "Chris...if you get her pregnant, you'll be fucked for the rest of your life!"
TITLE: "Whose Van is that on Fire Out There?"
STORY: My friend Tony and I were in a deli-slash-video store when a man in overalls (I swear), stood in the doorway, clutched his overalls straps and boomed out, "Whose van is that on fire out there?" I went to the window (we were on the 2nd floor), and sure enough, the flames were about 20 feet high. Here it is, if you want to read it (or don't believe me).
TITLE: "Sonata for Knife and Violin in F Major; 'Revenge'"
STORY: This one came to me two or three summers ago when I listened to Beethoven's "Sonata for piano and violin N 9 in A major, Op.47 'Kreutzer'" about 200 times. I wanted to write a story about a homicidal violinist who kills with a chef's knife for the creative power it gives him. I wrote it in four "movements", where each movement has notes to the "conductor" in Italian. Sounds pretentious, but it's not. Oh, and the F Major stands for "majorly f-cked".
As far as other writers are concerned, I'm interested in the stories behind their titles, as well as the titles that might have been. Here are a few examples:
TITLE: The Great Gatsby
ALTERNATES: Among the Ash Heaps and Millionaires, Trimalchio in West Egg, Gold-Hatted Gatsby, The High-bouncing Lover
TITLE: All the President's Men
ORIGINAL: At This Point in Time
TITLE: Jaws
ALTERNATES: Leviathan Rising, Great White, The Shark
My favorite "title story" though, has to be for James Cain's noir masterpiece:
TITLE: The Postman Always Rings Twice
STORY: While writing this book and others, Cain had worked out a system with his mailman where he would ring once when it was good news (checks or an acceptance letter) and twice when it was bad news (bills or a rejection). The postman, he said, always rang twice, so he decided to name the novel for this and the frustration it gave him. There have been a few geniuses in American literature, and Cain is one of them.
Well, there you have it. A couple hours spent writing about titles. I especially like the title of this piece because that's how I want to die—by redheads, baby.
