Small Dark Something
What makes a good book title? It’s a mysterious thing in a way. It has to speak to you, of course. But it also has to teach you something.
The phrase “wire to wire” originated as a horse-racing term, so I’ve heard. When a horse is first out of the gate, and in the lead the whole way, it’s said to have won wire to wire. The term has come to be used in other sports as well.
I first heard the phrase in relation to the 1984 Detroit Tigers. That year’s team won their first nine games and opened the season with a 35-5 won/loss record. They stayed in first place all the way and won the World Series. Only five teams in baseball have ever done that.
Honestly, 1984 was a tough year for me. There was a lot of loneliness and self-doubt. Call it corny, but watching the Tigers win day after day was important to me. It lifted me up a little, gave me something to cheer for. That phrase, Wire to Wire, stuck in my mind.
At the time, I was calling my unfinished novel Division Dance, but I scrapped that and started thinking of it as Wire to Wire – with no clue about what it would mean in the context of the book. There’s nothing about baseball or horse racing anywhere in the story.
But there is a little scene of The Great Wallenda falling to his death off a tightrope. I’d seen that on TV and it made an impression, to say the least.
Maybe because I was going through a tough time, I saw it this way. We all walk our tightrope in life. Our wires. There’s a platform at the end of the wire, and you tell yourself if you can just make it to that platform, you’ll be safe. But it’s not true. It’s an illusion. A lie we all tell ourselves. There really is no safe place. When you finish one wire, there’s another one waiting. We move through life walking wire to wire.
Okay, flash forward to 2006. Austin, Texas. Jon Dee Graham on stage at the Continental Club. By 2006, he’s made a ton of great music, but I’m late to the party. I’ve never heard him before. As I’m standing in the crowded club, he plays a song that knocks me out. The lyrics go like this.
There’s a stain in the trunk that will never ever ever come out
There’s a stain in the trunk that will never ever ever come out
And it’s shaped like a small…dark…something
The phrase Small Dark Something hit me like Wire to Wire did years ago. My manuscript-in-progress was called The Occupy Girl, but I ditched that and wrote Small Dark Something on the title page.
It took a while for the phrase to teach me what it was about. But it did, eventually. And the manuscript is finally done.
I feel lucky to have published WIRE TO WIRE a short lifetime ago with a great team at Tin House Books. As for SMALL DARK SOMETHING? Who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky again.
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