ENTITLED

If the thousands of words inside a book form its body, brain, and soul, then the two or three words of the title represent its face, the expression it wears when it goes out to meet the world and make its bid for acceptance.

Some titles are smiley faces, others are ironic or grim, but—take it from someone who knows—a lot of torturous thought goes into getting the expression just right. At this very moment thousands of authors are causing real damage to their brains trying to come up with a better label than the place-holding Work-in-Progress, convinced that if they find the perfect title it will by its charm, pithiness, and power, carry the book not only to bestsellerdom but eventual immortality.

Consider this: All those words inside a book and the handful in the title are the only ones the writer is asking readers to memorize, so they can order it at a bookstore or recommend it to friends. How strange it is then that I’ve never read any analyses of what makes a good title or advice on how to go about creating one. Maybe because there are no rules here, but only patterns, and it might be helpful to title-challenged authors to trace some of these out.

By far the easiest way to name a novel is to title it after your main character. David Copperfield. Anna Karenina. Rob Roy. Fanny Hill. Dracula. Moby Dick. Eponymous titles won’t sell a book on their own, but, if the book becomes a classic, the name really sticks with you. And some manage to be alluring and suggestive all on their own. Peregrine Pickle could only be about a rogue; Billy Bud could only be about a naif.

A more interesting way to do this is to take a name and add on the briefest of descriptions or tags, so the title’s not just Rebecca, but Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm; not just Theron Ware, but The Damnation of Theron Ware. Or eliminate the proper name and just do the description or tag: The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Man with the Golden Arm.

Alliteration is always helpful—again, you want the reader to remember your title and there’s nothing like rhythm to help this along. The Haunting of Hill House. Pickwick Papers. Guido the Gimlet of Ghent. Sinister Street. The Wind in the Willows. Or—often imitated, never equalled, wearing a wonderfully ironic and knowing wink—Pride and Prejudice.

A time-honored method is to borrow a title from popular songs, scripture, classic poetry, or familiar proverbs. The Catcher in the Rye (poetry). All the King’s Men (nursery rhymes). For Whom the Bell Tolls (poetry). A Good Man is Hard to Find (proverb). The Grapes of Wrath (hymn).

Pretentious writers like to insert the word “blood” in their titles, though I wish they wouldn’t. In Cold Blood. Blood Oranges. Blood Meridian. Wise Blood. Okay, I get it, we’re holding in our hands a very serious book, but I prefer titles that come at things slant, so, instead of saying, The Bloody Badge of Courage, we have The Red Badge of Courage, which to my ear is perfect.

“Love” shows up in a lot of titles. Love in a Time of Cholera. Love in the Ruins. Love in a Cold Climate. The Spy who Loved Me. If you’re really stuck for a title, I’d urge you to go to “love” a lot sooner than you do to “blood,” though, with a title like Love Lies Bleeding, you can have it both ways.

An interesting and effective titling-strategy is to use a full sentence. In Dreams Begin Responsibilities. What Make Sammy Run? Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Goodbye to All That. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden.

Often the best titles follow no rules or patterns at all, but come to the authors in a flash of inspiration so perfect that, combined with the power of their prose, it enters our vocabulary as a byword or saying that people use without ever realizing it began life as a book title. Brave New World. A Bridge Too Far. You Can’t Go Home Again. Catch Twenty-two—a title Joseph Heller apparently came up with after rejecting Catch Twenty-One and Catch-Twenty Three.

Some titles grab your attention before a novel even comes out, whets your appetite, so when I learned that Malachy Tallack, one of Scotland’s best young writers, has a new novel coming out this autumn called The Beautiful Atlantic Waltz, I placed an order just for the title alone.

Titles for non-fiction follow the same patterns, but tend to be more descriptive. The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. How to Win Friends and Influence People. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. What’s different in non-fiction is that a longish subtitle is often required, so authors have to wrack their brains for two titles, not just one. Thus, on a book I’ve just been reading, the title, A Great Idea at the Time, is followed by The Rise, Fall and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books.

The best titles for any creative work are probably the titles of plays. Maybe because they will appear up on a marquee or billboard and thus have greater prominence, or maybe because playwrights are good at coming up with pithy phrases, plays seem to have better names than novels. A Streetcar Named Desire. Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Death of a Salesman. Arsenic and Old Lace. Classics! And perhaps the best play title ever—hell, the best anything title ever—is Much Ado About Nothing.

My own titling talents are modest; one either come to me in a flash or I really have to struggle. When I wrote a collection of stories mostly set in the suburbs, The Man Who Loved Levittown was a natural; when I wrote a memoir about sons and fathers in love with their favorite sport, Soccer Dad was inevitable.

With novels it’s always been trickier. I wrote one set in Flanders in the last days of World War One. November—a gloomy month, not a hopeful one. But I wasn’t trying to say something just about autumn 1918, I was trying to say something about the entire twentieth century, the bloodiest century mankind has on its record. It wasn’t just a month of that Novemberial mood that the world suffered, but 100 dreary years of it—and so that’s where the title came from, A Century of November. And since many titles have an echo, authors paying tribute to another title that’s always haunted them, I probably had in the back of my mind that masterpice of the titling art, A Hundred Years of Solitude.

(I’ve always been a little dissatisfied with my titles, though I can’t quite pin down why. That said, I like a recent one, a newly published short story called “The Blind Curve,” which is the best three-word description of life I’m capable of.)

These are rough preliminary notes in a longish study of title writing that someone really should take a crack at. In the meantime, I’ll offer this as my conclusion: While I can’t prescribe what makes a good title, I know one when I see one. And so, sticking just to titles of novels and story collections, here’s a list of twenty favorites.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Been Down So Long It Seems Like Up To Me. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. All Quiet on the Western Front. The Call of the Wild. Obscure Destinies. Sometimes a Great Notion. The Scarlet Letter. Loser Take All. Pale Horse, Pale Rider. The Little Disturbances of Man. Briefing for a Descent Into Hell. A River Runs Through It. Beautiful Losers. A High Wind in Jamaica. Great Expectations. In Dubious Battle. Miss Lonelyhearts. The Last of the Mohicans. Jude the Obscure.

Which of your favorites have I missed???