The last time I was working on a novel manuscript I wasn’t thinking as much about it as a product that will need to be somehow sold as I was just trying to get the fucking thing done. (Spoiler: it has not sold.) I think this was, is, fine. But it meant that when it came time to write my query letters, my one- and two-page summaries, I was playing catch up. In particular I struggled to find "comp," or comparable, titles for the manuscript I had written. In part because, at least as far as the wisdom went when I was trying to learn about what these were, they needed to be recent. I was not then in the habit of reading much contemporary fiction (there was good and bad to this). It was a highly stylized, highly formal (in the sense of structure and literary form) manuscript, and it was hard to think up, to find comps. I read a lot of books that year. The comps I landed on were fine, but also not really right.

I tried to take solace in what a professor in undergrad once told me, that (paraphrasing) "if you are having trouble describing the piece, it means you’re doing something new." I’m not sure that was the case here, but it almost helped me sleep better.

In any case — 

I’m at work on another manuscript, which, though still secretly constraint-based and stylized, is at least a little more concrete in terms of what it’s trying to do, the point of it, the plot, etc. As such I have already, albeit somewhat accidentally, found a couple comps. I think, in reality, all this means is that I need to hurry the fuck up and finish the MS before the window closes, but also, you know: maybe there’s some "there" there this time.

The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas

A friend recommended this to me off-hand at a bar after I described my project and then a different friend recommended this to me after having read the first five pages in an "account-a-bility-buddy-group." I’d forgotten that the first friend recommended it to me and so wasn’t sure why it was in my library holds, but I am glad that I kept hold of it.

It’s tonally similar to what I’m trying to do in some ways, it centers primarily around a married couple and their friends, which is also something I’m exploring, so: should work, I think.

Structurally, totally different. Which is, of course, fine. I am sure I could not write a better book, certainly in that form.

The form was named short(ish) sections. Compared to the short sections in something like, say, The Lover, these moved more straightforward through time, but also instead of having the sections echo, falling back on one another in terms of content (or rather, specific event), the echoing was achieved largely through the titles themselves and the content therein, building up multiple mini-arcs over the course of the book. It’s frankly not my favorite form, but it sure as shit was very effective here.

The prose itself was light, considered, well-controlled. The control, in particular, is something I’ve been thinking a lot about, and it was lovely to read as an example of one way to do it. If I had a minor criticism of the book, it would be that at times it didn’t go deep or far enough — the light touch throughout made me want something a little more dramatic, or consequential, to rupture the voice at the end, but beggars can’t be choosers, and I am indeed a beggar.

Anyway, it stays on the comps long list.

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, trans. Sophie Hughes

This one was recommended to me quite a few months ago now, in particular as I’d recently reread Perec’s Things: A Story of the Sixties (with an eye to my current MS, so this was always going to be promising, comps-wise), which was the explicit model in many ways for _Perfection. I thought it was actually a pretty brilliant tribute to the Perec piece: the irony, the tone, the movement, were all a wonderful homage without actually ever feeling derivative. It took the general mode and method and updated it to a more current moment, I thought, rather brilliantly.

Again it’s a couple, again it’s stylistic, again the prose is very well-controlled. The insularity of the couple in particular was, I thought, well-rendered. As were the aspirations, which is something I’m fairly interested in in my current project.

And again, the feel of the book was very much like the kind of thing I am looking to do, although I feel less confident in my ability to do any of the kind of "novel of an era" work that Perfection does, for my money, so, so very well.

Every now and then I think about a project I either heard about or read about or maybe even read part of that was called something like "literary covers," with "covers" as in the Ataris covering "The Boys of Summer." This was like that, done very, very well. And maybe as a big Perec fan I’m very biased, but, you know. That’s fine.

Now I’ve just got to finish my thing.