There is at least one book where the title influenced my desire to purchase it — Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things by George Lakoff — and at least one in which the title has a haunting side affect after you finish the book — Simisola by Ruth Rendell. You simply cannot fairly discuss the Simisola title with someone who has not yet read the book.

And don’t get me started about cover art! Now for Under the Net.

At one point in my degree program I had to take an “Ethnicity in Literature” class. It is a requirement for all persons pursuing MAs in English in New York—one of those state mandates a lot of teachers (and students) find it hard to work with in terms of a focused course of study. I entered the class with a lot of preconceived notions; I suspect we all would, regardless our racial, ethnic, religious, political, or whatever persuasion. I came away from the first evening with a head full of questions (not untypical of me). What started it off was the fact that the professor gave us a poem to read and “take apart” (close reading, theory, poetics, structural analysis, the usual stuff). The crux of the moment, though, was that he gave us the poem without either title or name of author . . .

In the past we have mentioned, mostly in passing, the paratextual debris attached to texts: things like the publisher provided “classification” of the book (e.g., MEMOIR, AUTOBIOGRAPHY, PHILOSOPHY, or—one of my favorites—THEORY/LITERARY CRITICISM, which shows up on a lot of texts having NOTHING to do with literary criticism but because someone has mapped the theories expounded onto literature it becomes literary criticism), the color of the book jacket, the photograph (or drawing/painting) “illustrating” the titular notion(s), the font(s) used, even the physical size of the book and the quality of the paper and the heft of the book in the hand. All of these are carefully selected and placed so as to trigger our response (or lack of it) to the text. The title of the work is a part of this “game” (as Wittgestein would call it). So, where am I going with this? Well . . .

Without foreknowledge of either the title of the poem or the author’s name (and, believe me, names are as revealing as titles of works—for example, did you ever consider what image your name conjures in the mind of the hearer without ever having met you?), it is astonishing the variety of “readings” the poem was subject to. If I recall—and I would have to go back to my notebooks to be certain—the poem involved a turtle and some other “critters” that induced me to lean in the direction of an Aesop-like parody. There were other equally reader-dependent interpretations in the class. After we all talked ourselves out, the professor revealed both the title and the author’s name. It has been a number of years since that class but here is what I recall: the author was Native American (the Canadians call them Aboriginals, a term I tend to prefer) and the title was inextricably linked to that heritage. Suddenly, the “meaning” of the poem changed for all of us . . . particularly when we learned that the Tortoise was a sacred symbol of the clan from which the author sprang.

So, in relation to the titling/naming of literary works . . . like To Kill a Mockingbird, how does that title affect us? What induced Harper Lee to select it as the title? To what extent did her editor influence the selection of a title? I know that Conrad struggled over the title to his masterful short(ish) story, “The Secret Sharer.” Given all of the alternatives he considered, I believe he finally settled on the best possible title; certainly a lot of academic capital has been expended and made analyzing the implications of that title. How much effort did Lee put into her title? We may never know . . .

But, as a reader, what does that title do to you? What does it do FOR you? What does it mean or convey or predispose you to expect? Being aware of the film ruins our ability/opportunity to approach it with no preconceived notions. So here is an exercise . . . walk into a book store, pick up any book you have never seen before (new bestsellers are good for this) and “guess” from the title what the book is “about.”

For example . . . Under the Net. Despite the crap on the cover telling us what the book is about, what does the title conjure up in your mind . . . I leave it to you to make the opening post considering that point.

And let’s consider the other side of the affective/effective coin . . . could the story have been more effective if told in the voice of an eight year old child? James Joyce, in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, starts the first person narrative with the “voice” of a child narrator. As the story progresses and the narrator comes of age, the voice develops in to that of an adult narrator. It has been suggested that this narrative device is particularly effective in developing in the reader a sense of the growth and development of the narrator. We saw something like this in Lolita, with HH’s “voice” changing with circumstances. Faulkner is (in)famous for his character-narrators that speak in vernacular, whether they are young, old, ignorant, wise, retarded. And . . . it is an old trick/device learned—at least for the Americanists—from Twain. I’m not sure there is an answer, but the possibilities are fun to contemplate.