In an editorial today in the NY Times, they report that Norman Mailer's new novel will come with a bibliography. The Times asks if this is a good thing and I say anything that will make more work for novelists should be shunned like Britney Spears' offer to babysit.
The Times goes on to ask whether this bibliography thing is an attempt to cite sources or if it's pomposity. I say, if you have to ask, you don't know Norman Mailer.
But it did get me thinking about everything I've read while working on this new book.
1. Start with newspapers, magazines and tour guides from 1941.
2. Add the books Washington at War, Roosevelt's Secret War, Wild Bill and Intrepid, Intelligence During Wartime, Washington Is Like That, The G-String Murders, The Caine Mutiny, What Makes Sammy Run?, Katherine Graham's Washington, How Marines Fight, and a dozen other books that are stacked in my office, their pages marked with yellow sticky notes.
3. Now list all the movies from 1941 I've watched to look at clothes, cars, architecture, train travel, etc and we're talking about a bibliography that goes on for pages.
I like research, but I'm not writing a friggin' term paper here. This is a book, goddammit, and while I want to get things right, I'm not mining these resources for stuff to steal. But I would like to acknowldge the help of all these authors and the librarians at Duke's Perkins Library, the Library of Congress and DC's MLK Library.
Which is why they have an acknowledgements page.
So, what do you think? List all your influences, including Miss Martin, your third grade teacher? Or just write the story?
Which is where the Times finally comes down. They say, "As far as we’re concerned, novelists are obliged to disclose nothing besides the art of the stories they have to tell."
Yeah, I think that's about right.
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