Continuing Pilgrim Son from yesterday —

Masters says:

I began preparation of the first novel. (ultimately titled The Nightrunners of Bengal)  The subject must be the most powerful to my hand: the Indian Mutiny. I spent two days wondering whether I could afford to start with another, for the Mutiny was so great a subject that I really ought not to tackle it until I was better equipped to do so. But a man being charged by a tiger is wise to use his biggest gun the first time, there may not be a second. So the Mutiny it was.

. . . What was the natural second level (story behind the story) of the Mutiny? That stuck out a mile: the fact that good men on both sides were turned into beasts . . .

The next problem was research: now or later? I knew the principal events of the Mutiny, and more important, I knew roughly why it had come about, and what most British and Indians felt about it at the time. If I did a lot of research, I would dredge up more detailed information. I would find out what young ladies wore at formal balls in 1857, what was the correct way to address a deposed Rajah, the names of Havelock’s aides. But it was not certain that I would want to use any of that information, so the collection of it might be a waste of time. I also knew, from correcting Staff College papers, that once a man has done research, he has a strong tendency to make his reader swallow the fruits of it. I could see the danger. After all, it would seem a criminal waste, once I had with so much effort dug up the fact that Tippoo Sahib used to give his pet pug dog champagne for supper, not to use it. To hell with the architectural line and ornament plan of the book — stick it in.

I decided to leave research to the end. If my broad plan was not right, I had no business writing the novel in the first place. After I had done the first or second draft, I would find out whether the greased cartridges were introduced on April 1 or March 1, and I would make out a calendar for the year 1857 so that my Sundays fell on the right dates . . . important because on Sundays the British troops went to church, leaving their arms behind, until they learned better.

Research costs time, which is money, and sometimes travel, which is also money. I wrote Spirit Deer first because I could dive in with only a minimum of research. I also wrote science fiction and fantasy first, not only because they are my first love, but because I simply could not afford to write anything else. (See 208. The Cost of Research)

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Masters says that critics of a certain type, in the early fifties, believed that writers should take sides in the political problems of the day . . .

I did not. I had come to believe that the writer’s duty, as a writer, is to offer some effectively worded insight into the human condition. If anything else, a particular situation, for example, is at the center of his work — that is, if the situation and not the humans are the essentials of it — it will not last, because all situations change. It is for this reason that Of Mice and Men is a greater work than The Grapes of Wrath. The Depression has long gone; George and Lennie live forever.

I don’t fully agree (not that Masters expects me to). George and Lennie types and Depression type economic disruptions both, sadly, live forever. The Joads were stopped at the California border and undocumenteds are stopped at the Southern U. S. border. There is no essential difference.

It is certainly true that novelists who treat events through the actions of people with whom we can have sympathy, will get their point across better than propagandists. Uncle Tom’s Cabin started the Civil War by making northerners care about particular, fictional slaves. I have always had strong feelings about overpopulation, but I could not write with any effect until I wrapped the problem into the story of the colonization of Cyan, by people we could care about.

If these three posts have seemed a bit disjointed, remember that my intention has been to give bits and pieces of Masters’ advice to an audience that otherwise might never see them. The entire books is worth reading, if you have the time and patience.

Continuing Pilgrim Son from yesterday —

Masters dictated an outline of Brutal . . . and sent that with the first two chapters. Dial Press, who had asked for Brutal . . .  in the first place, was impressed, but wanted another reading. Two weeks later, they passed on the book.

Masters was not like you and me; he had friends in high places, so he could find out what went wrong. It turned out that a famous publisher had advised them not to publish anything by an ex-British Indian officer, and they caved to pressure.

Nothing personal, but your book does not meet our current needs. Does that sound familiar?

Masters returned to what he had written, and found it different than any book of its type and better than most. He decided to finish it and send it on its rounds to publishers on spec.

He finished it. He sent it out. It came back. He sent it out again —

As is the manner of things in publishing, rejections began to pile up. A friend of Masters’ gave this advice: (page 127)

A writer’s time is always valuable. If you don’t write anything, I can’t sell anything.  While Brutal is going around the publishers, you should be starting something else. . . .  Why don’t you write a novel? You could, you know.

Master’s says, “The writing of Brutal . . . had given me confidence that the mere mass of works in a full-length book was nothing to be afraid of.”

I offer you that quote here for the express purpose of adding, “AMEN!” Spirit Deer did that for me.

As usual, Masters approached the question with deep thought. Write a novel, or become a novelist? It isn’t exactly the same thing. Masters was looking of interesting work to fill the rest of his life, and provide security for his family. Writing one novel would not further that end. Becoming a novelist — producing novel after novel — would.

He would become a novelist, but what kind. He wrestles with this for many pages, starting on 128, before he decides what we already know. He will write historical novels about India, from the viewpoint of Brits who are half inside and half outside the culture of India. By page 138, he is ready to say:

I listed thirty-five areas of conflict about which I felt I could write novels. They covered the whole period from 1600 to 1947. Taken as a whole, they would present a large canvas of the British period in India. The British would be in the foreground, as they had been in actuality, yet I thought the canvas would show how they were controlled by their environment — India — even while they were ostensibley directing it.

(to provide unity to the project) . . . I thought that the only course left open to me was to put into the foreground of each book some member of a single continuing family.

And that is exactly what he did, through more than twenty novels.

Through all this, and other chapters besides, he interrupts his memoir with short paragraphs like:

John Day rejected Brutal. They said they already had a writer on Oriental subjects. . . .  and  . . . Little, Brown rejected Brutal. It was very well written and eminently readable, they said, but the couldn’t think what category to publish it in, as it contained elements of travel, belles-lettres, adventure, and military history, as well as autobiography.

I also remember those days of frustration. Now rejection slips are kind, vague, and always contain something like, “not for us, but try elsewhere.”  They do not cause hurt feelings, but they also don’t give any useful feedback.

Back in the day, I was once turned down on an outline that my agent was excited about, because the novel, on the subject of Shah Jehan’s reign, was “too Indian”. Imagine that. A novel about historical India that was too Indian. Another novel was highly praised by a publisher, who ended by saying, “But I can’t take it because men’s adventure books are no longer selling.”

Maybe its better when we don’t know why.  Pilgrim Son review continues tomorrow.

Pilgrim Son by John Masters is the third in a trio of memoirs. The first two are about his life in the British Indian army, the last is about becoming a writer.

As I said earlier, I first read Pilgrim Son in the late 70s, about the time I was writing Spirit Deer. I was impressed by Masters professionalism. I expected professionalism from the publishing industry —  the phrase publishing industry suggests that it is run in a businesslike manner. Within a few years, I decided that was a myth.

I recently went back to Pilgrim Son and reread it, looking for the point at which he rails against the industry for not recognizing that his first novel would be successful. I spent many hours and did not find the quotation, so I will tell you that he said something like this: If Nightrunners was good enough to be chosen for book clubs, then why did every editor who read it fail to know this? Quote, more or less.

Pilgrim Son is 383 dense pages, much of which is dedicated to Masters observations on becoming an American in the late 40s and early 50s, while living in a colony of bohemian artists and writers. That world no longer exists.

I can’t recommend the book to everyone. Nevertheless, if you are a serious would-be or beginning writer, you could do worse. For you, I will drop approximate page numbers from time to time in order to help you find the parts of the book which will be most useful to you.

The book Masters was writing at the beginning of Pilgrim Son was Bugles and a Tiger; its original title was Brutal and Licentious, part of a then well known quotation. I will call it Bugles  . . . or Brutal . . . as he does, according to which part of Pilgrim Son I am referring to at the moment. Sorry if that confuses you.

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Around the beginning of 1948, John Masters had settled down to write. This included discussing his prospects with several editors of his acquaintance, and receiving their advice.

Beginning writers will now be reaching for their favorite means of suicide or homicide at the notion that Masters got to talk to and receive advice from editors before he had written anything. It does help to have friends in high places — or so I am given to understand. I never had any myself.

Those editors suggested that he begin with a memoir of his life in India, somewhat following the pattern of Lives of a Bengal Lancer. (page 106, but also check out pp. 104-5) Masters disliked that book, but took what he could from it in planning his own. Planning was second nature to him, learned as a British Army officer, so he soon knew what every chapter of Brutal . . . was going to contain. Then it was time to write.

Masters says: I pulled myself together. The first chapter was only going to be twenty-five pages and I could manage that. The the next . . . and the next . . . One chapter at a time, I could do it. The book as a whole and each chapter had been shaped by the master plan. Now I must concentrate on each page, each line.     page 112

Masters finished the first draft and read it through. He didn’t like it. Lots of beginning writers have reached that stage. Masters had learned that an excellent plan does not always result in excellent execution.

It’s what he did next that makes him interesting. In his own words, somewhat shortened:

A more experienced author might have been able to avoid these errors, but for me there was no way but to replan in the light of what was there on paper. …. Find out how it happened, first, and then remedy it.

I divided several sheets of paper into lines and columns and went carefully through the MS, grading each sequence in three ways: by length, by type, and by merit of its type. It soon developed that almost every sequence could be classified as Action, Explanation, Color, Characterization or Thought. When the job was done, and it took several day’s hard work, my new charts revealed a very lumpy texture in the book. Page followed page of action, with no explanation and little color. Color was not used as a background to action or as a perimeter to characterization, but haphazardly, as the pictures had come to me. Although I could grade some sequences A, too many were B’s and C’s: not good enough for a professional.

 . . . Using my charts to correct the early faults, I rewrote the first two chapters.  . . . .  

I’ve never been quite that organized myself, but I have gutted and rebuilt many hundreds  of pages. Pilgrim Son review continues tomorrow.