“What’s It About?”

The question I most often receive regarding my forthcoming novel is the most obvious one and the one that I hate the most: “What’s it about?” Don’t get me wrong. I know that it’s a perfectly reasonable question and good one. I’m just never sure how to answer it. Is the goal of the question to discover the plot, and if so, how much of the plot should I reveal? What about the many sub-plots? Is my interlocutor interested in those too? Or, is the question a deeper one? Is its purpose to mine the thematic depths of the novel? I don’t know. But I’ve decided the failing is my own. I really need to come up with a pithy answer to this inevitably recurring question.

The most difficult aspect is boiling down nearly eighty-thousand words to a sentence that does justice to a story I’ve spent nearly two years researching and writing and providing that summary before the asker’s attention wanders to more pressing matters in his own life and beyond the subject which he had only introduced as the most obvious subject for small talk between us anyway. I’ve tried memorizing and reciting a piece of the actual blurb from the book jacket, but I always end up sounding inappropriately formal, like the narrator of a movie trailer.

I understand the need for a writer who is seeking representation to prepare an “elevator pitch” for the chance or planned meeting with an agent or editor at a writer’s conference or wherever fate throws the two entities together; however, every fiber of my being rebels against the notion of reducing my story to a sound byte. And I don’t mean to be pissy about it. It’s just that when I think of some of my favorite authors, I can’t imagine how they could have captured the sublimity of their novels in such a tiny baby food jar. How in God’s name could Tom Robbins have miniaturized Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates, or David Foster Wallace Infinite Jest, or how would Roberto Bolano have pigeonholed The Savage Detectives? By no means do I possess the audacity to compare my work with these masters of the novel form. I’m just saying that I would have to question the worthiness of any novel that could be successfully summed up in so few words.

Regardless of the difficulty of doing so, I need to conjure something and soon. I mean, what if it is Oprah’s first question? (I know. I know. But a man can dream can’t he?) So, here’s my response: “So Shelly is the story of three modern day teenagers with personalities, experiences, and philosophies of life based on those of the Romantic Poets: Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Together and alone, they confront the only two life experiences that really matter: love and death.”

Yuck! It still feels shamefully inadequate; however, I’m going to take its resistance to the nutshell as a good thing.