The Modern Novel, Broken Down to its Factory Made Pieces: Part 1

Advance Praise/Praise

This section is of course a way of boosting the author’s ego, and serves as a terrific way to advertise other authors and newspapers, which might be owned by the parent corporation of the publishing house. In any event, it’s an excellent way for one author to force another author, perhaps one more famous, to endorse their novel. This principal is most often used in the areas of genre fiction, specifically Science Fiction and Fantasy. It is also occasionally used in books of a higher class, where the point is to simply show off the credentials of said author. These usages however are considered to be vulgar to discuss in mixed company, as the blatant aggrandizement of them offends delicate sensibilities…generally the author’s but you never know who might show up to dinner.

The Title Page

Here we get the author’s name, the title of the book and the publisher’s name and logo. This was of course an early twentieth century invention, as many robber barons, while accosted by peasants or “mistreated labors” as they would have it, were wont to pick up whatever novel was being peddled by the malnourished child peddlers often used comically in Dickensian novels. Naturally, the robber barons had no time to actually look at the cover, too busy were they in showing their avid fascination, while waiting for hired goons to beat up and trouble makers. Publishers began putting it in, so the robber barons would not have to be bothered closing the book and looking at the cover. It was also of great help to the largely illiterate public, for then they’d be double clued in on what they couldn’t read. (Note: Sometimes, there is a further title page before this one and before the text proper, but that features only the book’s title and can usually be regarded as necessary for the binding and serve no real purpose).

Copy Right Page

            Ironically, the Copy Right Page, predates any actual copy write laws, as it first came into practice around 1456. It was a mandate by Chaucer that each copy of the Canterbury Tales come with the notice that it was indeed his work and was not to be distributed without his permission. He also insisted that all of his many creditors and investors be listed as responsible for the publishing of the book, and the research associated with it. While many complained that his “research” was little more than listening to minstrels and getting royally drunk, but Chaucer said they simply didn’t understand his genius. In the modern novel, the copy right page is most useful when torturing students with the use of citations and bibliographies, which Rockefeller helped design in the early forties, when he thought the lot of students was getting too “cushy”.

Dedication

            What we have here is a place for the author to thank people who offered them emotional support throughout the writing process, or who bribed them to get their name in print. The practice can first be seen, again, in the early Victorian era, when Lord Byron was issued a challenged by Clive Winston, third Ear of Essex -upon-Downs, that he could not get the name of every member of their club into his next novel. The novel, Heights of the Inferno, is among his least regarded works, but it is the first place where a Dedication was seen, so that Byron could fit the last two people from the club, ironically Clive Winston and himself. Byron was also the first to deride its sentimental usage, for when he saw the heartfelt dedication in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, he was heard to remark, “It was such a terrifically complex tale, ruined before it was begun by her sickening reminstations to her mother”. Upon being told Shelly’s mother had died when she was very young, Byron said “Then at least she didn’t get to see the putrescence her daughter foisted upon a populace lusting for blood.” Shelly and Bryon never spoke again, although this had a lot to do with Byron’s bet that he could not shut up for a whole year, during which time Shelly caught consumption and died. Her last words were: “To Lord Byron, may your soul forever burn in the fires of Hell.” Byron was suitably impressed by her dedicating her death to him, and made it a point that all novels published by his friends were to have such sentiments.

Epigraph

            Epigraph’s a relatively modern invention, dating back only to 1948, when Roald Dahl quoted Arthur Conan Doyle before the beginning of Sometime, Never: A Fable for Supermen, a charming story about the apocalypse and the planet Krypton, though it remains out of print due to the deliberate action of DC Comics. However, the epigraph was thought of as early as 1735, when Jonathan Swift wished to open the amended version of Gulliver’s Travels with a quote from something besides the Bible or Shakespeare. However, his friend and fellow Irishmen, William Wordling (an accountant of no particular note), told him to wait a few hundred years for a greater body of literature to develop. Swift took his advice, but rued it for years after, as he found the perfect epigraph on a bathroom wall the very day he sent his book to the printers. Today, the Epigraph is either a way to help elucidate themes and ideas that will be present in the story, or to add a cheap veneer of respectability to classless novels.

Acknowledgements

            This is nearly identical to the Dedication, except it is for those that provided material help and is a more straightforward “thank you”.