The best book titles
How do writers come up with book titles? Rachel Johnson picks the best – from P G Wodehouse to John Grisham – and the worst
As a mid-list, middle-aged author, I spend far too much time pondering the eternal riddle of publishing. Why are some books stone-cold all-time classics – and most of them total turkeys?
The clue is in the title. Had F Scott Fitzgerald called The Great Gatsby ‘Trimalchio in West Egg’ or ‘The HighBouncing Lover’ – two of his many working titles – would we still quote that deathless last line about being boats borne back ceaselessly to the past?
I think not. It’s the holy trinity of title, author, and content that sweeps it into the top 100.
Like every author, I sweat blood over titles, but sadly can’t resist puns ( Notting Hell, Shire Hell). Those who hope to be taken more seriously fish from the deep pools of the classics, the Bible, Shakespeare and poetry. The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway, Wharton’s House of Mirth and A Time to Kill by John Grisham are all plucked from Ecclesiastes.
My agent and publisher both thought my last book – about being a prospective candidate for one whole month for Change UK – was to be called the ironic ‘My Life in Politics’. They were happy with the little jokey package until I came back from a walking holiday in the Cévennes and announced it was called Rake’s Progress. That guaranteed that all but a tiny handful of readers related to me wouldn’t have the first clue what the book was about (my family call me Rake). This was a mistake.
‘I spend as much time on titles as on covers and editorial,’ says the agent Jonny Geller. ‘Imagine you’re in a supermarket and have less than a second to tell readers what they’re buying.’
Geller represents David Nicholls, whose titles are minimal to say the least. ‘To tell you the truth, we were always worried about them,’ Geller reveals. ‘If you do a keyword search on Google for “Us” or “One Day”, the books won’t come up.’ He need not have worried – both of them sold and sold.
Geller says American publishers and readers prefer titles that do what they say on the tin. The agent Caroline Dawnay, my sister-in-law, disagrees. Her favourite title is The Worm Forgives the Plough. It’s about an academic who pitches in working on the land to help the war effort – not that you’d guess.
A glance at the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list proves Geller right. There’s a book about President Obama called Obama and a book called How to Be an Antiracist which need no elucidation. They’re sledgehammer titles. Like American advertising, in fact: ‘Take Advil. It works!’
There are exceptions. Liza Campbell’s memoir, Title Deeds, recounts dark tales of Cawdor Castle and the disinheriting by her adored father, the 25th Thane, of his oldest son in favour of his stepmother. The book couldn’t have a more perfect title, given its theme and revelations.
In America, though, Liza’s book became A Charmed Life. The blurb then explains the book: ‘The story of the last child to be born at the impressive and renowned Cawdor Castle, the same locale featured in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.’ It sounds more like a feature for Town & Country than a book lifting the lid on toffs behaving badly.
As an experiment, I trawled my bookshelves for titles that will never stale. All of P G Wodehouse. Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The Female Eunuch. A Dance to the Music of Time (taken by Anthony Powell from the eponymous Poussin picture). The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Vanity Fair. Goodbye to Berlin. A Handful of Dust (borrowed by Evelyn Waugh from Eliot’s The Waste Land). Each unimprovable in its perfection.
The New York publishers Doubleday used to have a man known as ‘the title guy’ in the room when these matters were under discussion. The title guy became especially prized after publishers were struggling to come up with a title for the third book in Bruce Catton’s trilogy about the American Civil War. ‘ A Stillness at Appomattox,’ he piped up. The book won a National Book award and a Pulitzer.
There is a niche category of books where the title is better than what’s between the covers: By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart, and Marshall Mcluhan’s The Medium Is the Massage. But if a book’s no good, it doesn’t matter how memorable, commercial or timely its title.
During the festive season, publishers try to flog us books with Christmas in the title, just as cheesy seasonal movies are too often released at the most magical time of year.
It’s very hard to remember any of these movies or books. I can think of only three Christmas crackers – The Snowman by Raymond Briggs, Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales.
Still, in the end, it’s the market, not the author, that decides if a title works or not. As the late super-agent Ed Victor said, ‘A good title is the title of a book that’s sold millions of copies.’