I obtained Biting the Wall by J. M. Johnston—and the next book I'll review, She–Crab Soup, which I'm currently reading—through rejection. I had submitted He Followed Her to School One Day, a novel I had written, to a press that expressed interest in humor. IMHO, He Followed Her to School One Day, although essentially a murder mystery, contained a good deal of humor through character, plot, and style. It was rejected with a note that said that the publishing house was interested in comic novels, and that my work was not comic. Always anxious to learn what a publishing house really wants, I ordered two of its books. Biting the Wall is the first one I read. I struggled to find the humor in it and will point out what, IMHO, worked and what didn't.
The overall structure dealt with a campus computer being used to obtain government information and then supposedly to pass it on to unfriendly nations. Not inherently funny, to my way of thinking. It was also not suspenseful, which I believed that
He Followed Her to School One Day was . The climatic scene in
Biting the Wall was characters showing up unexpectedly with guns, waving them about, pointing them, but never actually using them to do anymore than scare the other characters present. To me what Johnston did with his plot and climatic scene wasn't funny. I killed off a character in
He Followed, but he was an absolutely despicable person. (Guess I was trying for a Sharon-McCrumb-style plot.) None of Johnston's characters ever died, even if the reader might hope one of them would.
Specifics:
1) I did smile a few times. A running subplot has an overweight, not terribly intelligent police officer riding around in a variety of vehicles in order to give traffic tickets. The main character, Llew, is imagining situations and thinks, " ... visions of being pursued by a huge yellow school bus, its angry red lights flashing at him…" (page 131) Amusing picture, IMHO. Of course, I can be easily amused.
2) I did find one scene downright funny, even if it was totally unrelated to the plot. Llew McQuilla, the point of view character, meets an author in a bar. Recently she had started writing a novel, then became totally interested in the characters, so she cut out plot. Next she lost interest in the details about each character and simply concentrated on the names. Ultimately what she wound up writing was a fictional telephone directory. She and Llew have the following exchange:
"Fiction?"
"Yeah. The names are just made up."
"Oh. So you don't use real people?"
"Only if I change their names like in novels, where they have to say 'all the characters in this book are fictitious.'"
Funny. Again, easily amused.
3) The following sentence bothered me. Llew is standing in front of an elevator. "There were no direction arrows, as this was a single–story building and the only direction was down." (page 185) I don't know how to rewrite it, but down in a single story building doesn't seem right. To me, one-story buildings are built on slabs where there isn't anything to go down to. Okay, there might be a basement if the building is not on a slab, but the elevator would still have arrows. Granted, the sentence itself is a minor point, but it pulled me out of the story. (Truthfully, I do need to admit that it didn't take much to drag me out of this story.)
4) Another genuinely funny scene occurred when a pompous pianist is mid-concert and the letters on the piano in the non-air-conditioned auditorium start to stick. He reacts by demolishing the piano, an act that is far from uncommon in current culture. But on a university campus? Still unlikely, I think. Or at least hope.
5) Mulling as I type and think, I've dec ided that the editors in this publishing house find dialect funny. I find it annoying, if not downright insulting to the character and his heritage.
6) I've read in how to books that in msteries the dénouement should be as short as possible. In
Biting the Wall it goes on for over two chapters. That's not short.
7) This publishing house seems to believe that characters' names must be unusual to be funny, and the author does come up with some strange ones. Examples: Van Ruedge, Llew McQuilla, Bryon Devilbliiss, Horace Croup, Harry Gross, Godfrey Daniels, Roberta Turnbuckle, Paisley Bradweith and so on. With names that peculiar, I found it hard to keep up with who was who, kind of like Russian novels where each character has at least three loooong names.
I did occasionally question words and their use, specifically:
1) I assume "cushlamonchree" is a word of disgust, delight, or horror, used in moments when a less pretentious character might say, "wow!" or, in computer lingo, "OMG." And, since I could find no listing of the word, I'll stick with that assumption.
2) Cigaret. "… Extinguishing her cigaret in the ashtray." (page 113) I'd seen bad spelling before, but not often or for a long time. A quick look in
www.dictionary.com showed the spelling, but immediately switched to cigarette for all the definitions. Why did the author use it? Absolutely no idea.
3) Eructation. A character sneezes and says, "… pardon the rude eructation." (page 195) I looked it up and got to play the fun dictionary game where one gets sent to other places. I was sent to eruct, which is a verb that means " 1. to belch forth, as gas from the stomach. 2. to emit or issue violently, as matter from a volcano." Okay, it is a legitimate word, and I didn't know it. But is it suitable for dialogue? The character is pompous—as most of Johnston's characters are, but the sentence still doesn't scan right.
4) The author has in my mind a strange use of "amplified." "… administered a greatly amplified second dose [of cough medicine]." (page 196) Okay.
www.dictionary.com does have meanings that cover areas other than sound. Perhaps with my theater background it's possible that I've only heard it in the context of sound. It appears the author didn't make up that use. My bad.
I can't really recommend
Biting the Wall, but others might find it funny. Also, it would have been a much easier read if I had known more about computers
(Yes, there will be a review of Through the Language Glass, but it was filled with lots of information and the review will be long. I'm writing it in stages.)
