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Saturday, January 26, 2008

Two new novels set in Las Vegas

Two new novels are set in, and largely about, Las Vegas: The Delivery Man by Joe McGinniss Jr., and Beautiful Children by Charles Bock. Both are first novels.

The story of how the first one was published has some interesting and -- for writers -- comic bits:

When McGinniss was looking for people to give his manuscript a read, among the first people he contacted was (Bret Easton) Ellis. "I groaned," says Ellis of receiving McGinniss' first e-mail asking for help. "Of course, you have to understand, I feel completely indebted to his father. There was no way I was going to say no to his request."

Ellis sent McGinniss back to the drawing board. "It needed to be tightened up," he says. "I felt there were a lot of missed opportunities... There was a lot of editorializing. He had the same setting [of the published novel], the same cast of characters, the same complicated relationships, but the story needed to be more precise."

"I was very naive," McGinniss says. "I'd just assumed you crank it out and if it reads well, it's a novel -- it's done, you're set. At the time I sent it to him, inside I thought, I think I'm pretty close." For the next two years he made multiple revisions and did some more Vegas research...

The confusing thing for novelists at the beginning of their careers is that you're aware some people do get manuscripts published without extensive, multiple revisions; while they may not "crank it out," they basically lay it down, do some polishing, and they really are done. T. Coraghessan Boyle is one of these; I heard him interviewed on a local radio station while I was writing my own first novel, Make Nice (which also happens to be set partly in Las Vegas). I phoned up the show and asked the author about his revision process. He said:

This is going to drive a lot of people crazy, but I don't do any subsequent drafts. I do substantial rewriting as I go along in the first draft, and when I get to the end of the book, it's essentially done. Of course there's editing and so on, but what's in my computer is basically it.

Many more writers do the multiple-revisions thing. My friend Katia went through seven or eight drafts of her first novel Crashing America and she's into the fourth or fifth draft of her next book. Soon I'll be commencing the fourth draft of Bangalored, my second book -- though like McGinniss Jr. when I sent it to my agent last year I thought, It's pretty close.

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