MEMO: Advice to budding novelists of all ages based on Markus Zusak's experience (written with tongue firmly placed in cheek): If you wish to write a great novel:
1. Become best buds with death. Adopt death's voice as yours. Better yet, appropriate death's voice. Steal it as you might steal a book. Then make that voice the narrator of your novel. (That's what Markus did.) 2. Learn to write like a fallen angel. 3. Give up your admiration for first responders. Admire your voice—the voice of death—as "way better" because now your voice is "the last responder."4. Never, never, never (I mean it!) apologize for your last-responder role. Bring dignity, but not only dignity, bring regal nobility to your role as the last responder. Know that, in the end, there is no more essential a worker than you.
If you read last month's EWA, you know that by calling Marcus Zusak's novel, The Book Thief, a "stolen masterpiece" I don't mean to cast aspersions. In my view, Marcus stole it fair and square; it will always be his achievement, although one could say at this point (as with any great work of art) in a way his achievement is no longer his. Now it belongs to the ages.
So let me ask you, Dear Reader, if you narrated a novel as the voice of death, do you think you would have much use for metaphors or similes.
Well, guess what? In The Book Thief you will find very few of those (although I found a few and each was stunningly beautiful, for example….
• A downed enemy pilot: "His eyes were like coffee stains." (Pg. 490) • Superhot metal cooling down: "The runaway tick-tock of cooling metal….sped up the minutes…standing there for hours." (Pg. 489) Then there was the sheer brilliance of this description: • "It was Steiner who noticed the small fire and the sliver of smoke farther down, close to the Amper River. It trailed into the sky and the girl held up her finger. "Look." (Pg. 488) • He will often humanize objects to make them humanoid. For example when Hans' team tries to prop up a bombed building so as to remain standing it has "elbows" sticking out of it at odd angles.Every once in a while, you'll forget that the novel is being narrated by the voice of death, (You know, it's crossed my mind that perhaps it's not at certain points) and then you'll be brought up short when the narrator writes: "Far away, fires were burning, and I had picked up just over two hundred murdered souls. (Pg. 485)
Finally, I leave it to you. What can compare with this description? (Please direct all compliments to the voice of death. What's the voice of death's email address, you ask? (So you can compliment her, the voice of death, that is.) Good question. Here's another good question: What does the voice of death's inbox look like on the Tuesday morning after a long holiday weekend during the Delta Variant Reign of Terror?) Well, as I was saying when I was so rudely interrupted by the voice of death herself!
"Above me the sky eclipsed—just a last minute of darkness—and I swear I could see a black signature in the shape of a swastika. It loitered untidily above.
"Heil Hitler," I said, but I was well into the trees by then. Behind me a teddy bear rested on the shoulder of a corpse. A lemon candle stood below the branches. The pilot's soul was in my arms."
That description I just quoted is immediately followed by this, what I'd call death's ultimate LinkedIn self-reference. (He gives himself five stars. No lie!)
"It's probably fair to say that in all the years of Hitler's reign, no person was able to serve the Fuhrer as loyally as me. A human doesn't have a heart like mine. The human heart is a line, whereas my own is a circle, and I have the endless ability to be in the right place at the right time. The consequence of this is that I'm always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty and I wonder how the same thing can be both. Still, they have one thing I envy. Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die." (Pg. 491)
I'll leave you with this: (Note: Liesel is the hero of this novel. She is the book thief.) "In Frau Holtzapfel's kitchen, Liesel reads. The pages waded by unheard, and, for me, when the Russian scenery fades in my eyes, the snow refuses to stop falling from the ceiling. The kettle is covered as is the table. The human's, too, are wearing patches of snow on their heads and shoulders. The brother shivers. The woman weeps. And the girl goes on reading, for that's why she's there, and it feels good to be for something in the aftermath of the snows of Stalingrad. (Pg. 471)
MEMO TO ONE'S SELF: Learn to write like that and you'll write just like a fallen angel.
And just to think, officially this novel is labeled "YA" meaning it's recommended for and marketed to young adults—yes, sixth grade and up. If only adult literature was consistently as brilliant and inspired, which is to say, soul crushing, soul reincarnating, and soul releasing.
