Given that I was recently ankle-deep in the soul-sucking quagmire that is querying literary agents, I decided it might be a good idea to write a sales pitch for five novels that probably wouldn’t find an agent today. I mean, I say ‘probably’, but given the number of form rejections I’ve amassed over the past five years, it is very possible that I have zero idea about what sells and what doesn’t.
Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
Dear Landlubber,
Call me Melville. I’m currently seeking representation for MOBY-DICK; OR, THE WHALE, my novel-cum-whale-hunting-manual, which is complete at 209,117 words. I’m contacting you as you have published all my works up to now.
For any normal man, losing a leg to whale bite would signal the end of his hunting career. But Captain Ahab is far from normal: he’s a soliloquy-spouting, doubloon-hammering, pagan-god-worshipping whaleman hell-bent on hunting down the son of a bitch whose only mistake was to leave him still breathing. Helping him in his quest is a ragtag crew, including a noble savage, a cabin boy on acid and a man who stands around observing everything without ever getting involved. As Ahab’s ship races across the Pacific, there’s one question the crew will have to ask themselves before the voyage is over: will Ahab’s hunt for Dick consume them all, just like the whale consumed his leg?
Featuring a cast of characters that fade in and out at random, a narrator who switches between first-person limited and omniscient, and some chapters literally about how to make rope, MOBY-DICK; OR, THE WHALE combines Shakespearean prose with the slogging misery of a school science textbook.
I’m a former sailor and the author of five books, all of which are about being a sailor. Nathaniel Hawthorne has called my writing “wholesome to our staid landsmen”. I’d be delighted to send a sample, ship-shape and Bristol fashion.
Yours,
Herman Melville
On the Road – Jack Kerouac
Dear Old Slim Smith,
I’m getting in touch with you about my autobiographical travelogue ON THE ROAD, which is complete at 96,860 words. Except nothing is complete, is it?
If you’ve got an open mind for the straight talk, then you’ll understand the man, the GHOST, travelling between a dream and hell; it’s about life, yes, yes, about that great gig we all take part in and the people, the crazy minds we meet along the way, because well lack-addy THAT’S what counts you understand? Those fabulous yellow roman candles who sit in bars and spout nothings that I turn into somethings and who steal cars and listen to the jazz men BLOW damn you with the sweat rolling in waves off my face like the holy fool that I am.
Taking the blueprint of John Clellon Holmes’s Go and the attention span of someone with serious ADHD, ON THE ROAD looks at what it means to go for a drink with that mate of yours who is kind of annoying, but whom you hang out with anyway on the off chance he’ll end up doing something ridiculous at the end of the night which you can tell your real friends about.
A former high school football star, I am the author of one novel, which to date has sold approx. 13 copies. I live with Memère in New York. If you’d like a sample chapter, I’ll have to tear it off the scroll.
Meilleures salutations,
Jean-Louis Kerouac
Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
Dear Subordinate,
My magnum opus is ready. Titled ATLAS SHRUGGED, it is complete at a 562,000 words, because I put effort into everything I do.
Set in an alternate dystopian timeline that bears no relation to this one, the USA is a country on the verge of collapse. Businesses are filing for bankruptcy, transport infrastructure is in tatters, the federal government is ruled by lobbyists, and much of the population lacks access to well-paying jobs, medical care and basic commodities. On top of that, the few minds talented enough to bring the country back from the brink are vanishing into thin air. When the disappearances threaten to affect her personal success, railroad magnate and sociopath Dagny Taggart takes it upon herself to uncover the mystery. Along the way, this genuinely strong female character will inexplicably subordinate herself to two different men. Which one will she choo-choo-choose?
Featuring an approx. 100-page speech about Objectivism requiring the stamina of a thoroughbred horse and the stubbornness of a mule to get through, Atlas Shrugged asks the essential question, ‘Why should we bother to help people less fortunate than ourselves? Seriously, why?’
Who is Ayn Rand? Originally from St. Petersburg in Russia, I am a successful novelist, an academic and a philosopher, all of which I have achieved exclusively by virtue of my own will and perseverance. I do not send out sample chapters; life is not a soup kitchen. If I hear no response from you, then you are a wastrel.
Yours bitterly,
Ayn Rand
Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
Salutations,
I am…as you may have deduced…seeking representation for my roman GRAVITY’S RAINBOW, which is fertig at 325,000 words…reaching in a parabolic arc…through the starlit Namibian night…ja ja ja.
Lieutenant Tyrone Slothrop is a man (that much is clear) on a mission: to find the S-Gerät, a mysterious device said to control a phallic German rocket. As he races from the bombed-out streets of London to a French seaside resort to an underground mine to an orgy boat to the rubble of Berlin to a fascist industrial dystopia and a bunch of other nightmare hellscapes, he encounters a cast of 400+ colourful characters all in pursuit of the same device. But as the side quests mount up and reality starts to unravel around him, Tyrone will have to ask himself whether there’s any point to what he’s doing – or if he should have stayed dressed up like Rocketman, because at least in those passages the narrative kind of makes sense.
Detailing the most comprehensive banana breakfast known to man and containing an 100-page wall of text near the beginning to purposefully dissuade people from continuing with the novel (followed by a man fighting an octopus secret agent as a reward for those who stick with it), GRAVITY’S RAINBOW is a Ulysses for the post-Vietnam generation in which narcissistic personalities abound.
As for myself, I’ve dusted this letter for prints. It’s not even my handwriting; I got the milkman to jot it down. I drove to a different state to mail it. You will never find me.
Yours reclusively,
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon
Green Hills of Africa – Ernest Hemingway
Dear Sir,
Querying now: new novel. About hunting.
Best,
Papa
kerouac’s my bag, man.