The Cross-Over Book

Alexis de Tocqueville, who observed and judged American character and life in the first half of the nineteenth century, had some critical things to say about the literary styles that succeed among the people of a democracy.


"As the time they can devote to letters is very short, they seek to make the best use of the whole of it. They prefer books which may be easily procured, quickly read, and which require no learned researches to be understood.... Above all, they must have what is unexpected and new. They require strong and rapid emotions, startling passages, truths or errors brilliant enough to rouse them up and to plunge them at once, as if by violence, into the midst of the subject....

"Style will frequently be fantastic, incorrect, over-burdened, and loose, almost always vehement and bold. Authors will aim at rapidity of execution more than at perfection of detail. Small productions will be more common than bulky books; there will be more wit than erudition, more imagination than profundity; and literary performances will bear marks of an untutored and rude vigor of thought, frequently of great variety and singular fecundity. The object of authors will be to astonish rather than to please, and to stir the passions more than to charm the taste."


The kind of bold that he's describing is not what I want from myself or the writers I read.

Unfortunately, de Tocqueville has a pretty good grasp of the kind of choices that the largest number of readers and publishers are still making in this country.

And that makes it very tempting to try to write to that audience.

Truly bold, however, may be doing one's own work without regard to that pressure. For me, it is to revise in a way aimed at satisfying my own standards and at the same time attempting to be accessible to readers in a hurry who are looking for a good time.

Not so easy. That's why for me the process takes so long.

It's because I'm "trying to serve two masters." That's supposed to be impossible, but I don't believe it. There's almost always one book on the bestseller lists that is complex and beautiful, even as it retains its "rude" American vigor. This is what's known in the trade as "the crossover book."

That's the slot I'm aiming for, the one that Tocqueville didn't mention.



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