Alice, I can hardly express how helpful this post has been to me. It was a bit of a thunderbolt, as I am just at the start of rewriting, yet again, the opening to my book. The draft is full of notes to myself: "something more meta here," a term I've used for longer than the mega-company that has claimed it. Now I read your wonderful post and am struck (no other word) by the Gatsby prologue as being just what I needed to find another way into mine. (And the fact that it has shown up this morning in Narrative's newsletter as well seems a sign that I am on the right track, if you believe in such things, and I do.) So I have spent the last couple of mornings using Fitzgerald's prologue as a jumping-off place for mine, generating several pages of possible words to clarify my own need to "make a preemptive, immediate case" for my book (and to let it be "wild westish - delicious!). Whether it will be referential or not, I don't know. It could be, since one of the two stories I'm writing is set in the 1920s, but I could let it be more subtle. Anyway, this is just to say thank you, thank you for your posts, and I look forward to reading the rest of your archive. I'm new to Substack, and here I have found a wonderful way station on my journey.
Cari, thank you so much for letting me know this helped. I love that you are writing with Fitzgerald by your side as a guide and an inspiration. I deeply believe in communing with the literary ancestral voices. Thank you so much, too, for subscribing.
What is so funny to me is that I was bonkers for F. Scott in high school, but he was supplanted by Virginia Woolf in college years. I have long since let go of my four-volume set of his novels from those early days. So this feels a bit like a homecoming. Thanks for bringing him round to meet me again.
Yes to everything! And why are editors and agents so opposed to what so many of us find deeply satisfying? I will admit that I have, on occasion, let a prologue wash over me because it didn’t quite make sense. Yet. But that never stopped me from reading on. Rather, it encouraged me. To me a prologue can be like a promise that there’s something good ahead. Something worth reading. And when that happens, going back and rereading the prologue once I’m done with the novel feels like eating a triple sweet dessert. Because what’s more delicious than the feeling of ah, yes, of course, now I see. Thank you, Alice!
This is hugely validating. I'm also a member of #TeamPrologue -- both as a reader and as a would-be novelist. (I'm about a year-and-a-half into the process of trying to teach myself how to write my first novel.)
BTW: I'm reading (and loving) FELLOWSHIP POINT. It has a real “classic literature” depth and feel: allowing the reader to be deeply immersed in everything, as opposed to constantly sprinting toward the next plot point. Thank you for the gift of this book!
I don’t have THE FIXER by Malamud here with me, and it’s been decades since I read it, but I seem to remember a very effective prologue at its start. I like them. And I enjoy writing them. Thanks for this reminder.
Alice, I can hardly express how helpful this post has been to me. It was a bit of a thunderbolt, as I am just at the start of rewriting, yet again, the opening to my book. The draft is full of notes to myself: "something more meta here," a term I've used for longer than the mega-company that has claimed it. Now I read your wonderful post and am struck (no other word) by the Gatsby prologue as being just what I needed to find another way into mine. (And the fact that it has shown up this morning in Narrative's newsletter as well seems a sign that I am on the right track, if you believe in such things, and I do.) So I have spent the last couple of mornings using Fitzgerald's prologue as a jumping-off place for mine, generating several pages of possible words to clarify my own need to "make a preemptive, immediate case" for my book (and to let it be "wild westish - delicious!). Whether it will be referential or not, I don't know. It could be, since one of the two stories I'm writing is set in the 1920s, but I could let it be more subtle. Anyway, this is just to say thank you, thank you for your posts, and I look forward to reading the rest of your archive. I'm new to Substack, and here I have found a wonderful way station on my journey.
Cari, thank you so much for letting me know this helped. I love that you are writing with Fitzgerald by your side as a guide and an inspiration. I deeply believe in communing with the literary ancestral voices. Thank you so much, too, for subscribing.
What is so funny to me is that I was bonkers for F. Scott in high school, but he was supplanted by Virginia Woolf in college years. I have long since let go of my four-volume set of his novels from those early days. So this feels a bit like a homecoming. Thanks for bringing him round to meet me again.
Yes to everything! And why are editors and agents so opposed to what so many of us find deeply satisfying? I will admit that I have, on occasion, let a prologue wash over me because it didn’t quite make sense. Yet. But that never stopped me from reading on. Rather, it encouraged me. To me a prologue can be like a promise that there’s something good ahead. Something worth reading. And when that happens, going back and rereading the prologue once I’m done with the novel feels like eating a triple sweet dessert. Because what’s more delicious than the feeling of ah, yes, of course, now I see. Thank you, Alice!
This is hugely validating. I'm also a member of #TeamPrologue -- both as a reader and as a would-be novelist. (I'm about a year-and-a-half into the process of trying to teach myself how to write my first novel.)
BTW: I'm reading (and loving) FELLOWSHIP POINT. It has a real “classic literature” depth and feel: allowing the reader to be deeply immersed in everything, as opposed to constantly sprinting toward the next plot point. Thank you for the gift of this book!
I don’t have THE FIXER by Malamud here with me, and it’s been decades since I read it, but I seem to remember a very effective prologue at its start. I like them. And I enjoy writing them. Thanks for this reminder.
I love prologues and preludes. I’ll take a good epilogue any day, too. This was wonderful. Middlemarch!! Yes, queen.