Let's leave this Untitled for Reasons that Will Soon be Made Clear

Lately I’ve been thinking about titles. To me, books are like their own compact, self-contained worlds. Opening a cover to its first page is like opening a door and seeing the first steps into that world. But what makes you open a book in the first place? We all know “never judge a book by its cover,” and most people who read books know that this isn’t entirely accurate. I have indeed picked up a book just by merit of its gilded letters or some graphics or even the soft feel of its spine against my fingers.

But covers change. Almost every time a book is reprinted the jacket art is different, the font is altered, even the blurb on its back or inside the dust jacket is rewritten. The thing that stays the same—aside from the actual text, and even that is subject to revision, annotation, or abridgment—is the title. 

The title then is the constant that often causes readers—myself included—to pick up a book. After all, most books are stored with other books, not facing out in full glory of their graphic design, but only a sliver of spine showing. Those gilt letters may draw the eye, but it’s what those letters spell out that often clinch the deal.

What I’ve been thinking about recently is how a title can be so evocative, abstract, even irrelevant to the plot, and still make me want to read the book. Most writer’s guides will say a title has to tell the reader something of the plot to “hook” them. I don’t think this is entirely true, because certainly Jane Eyre, Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Deronda only tell you the main character’s name. Other book titles are merely the places where the plot takes place. Anything could happen at Middlemarch or Key Largo. 

Sometimes the author adds a bit of information, by adding “The Adventures of” or “The Chronicles of” to the title. But then, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Vesper Holly, Sherlock Holmes, and Oliver Twist all have very different adventures. And really title padding like “The Chronicles,” “The Story” or “The Tales of” is pretty unnecessary; most readers know they’re reading a story/tale/chronicle. 

Other additions to a name that give hints to the actual plot of the story therein. It’s okay if they don’t give ALL the information.  I don’t need to know where Gulliver goes until I actually read the book.  It’s enough that he travels. We may not know where he got his diploma, but we know that Dr. Moreau has an island. 

Other titles are very obscure. Catch-22 wasn’t a catchphrase until the book. To Kill a Mockingbird doesn’t make any sense whatsoever until you’ve read the entire book. And then it still doesn’t make that much sense. Then again, sometimes obscurity creates a sense of mystery that is irresistible to even a casual reader who happens across it on the shelf. After all, Catch-22 is a better title than “An Impossible Situation,” and I’d be hard-pressed to summarize To Kill a Mockingbird (“Coming of Age Among Racism”?). 

I think some of the best titles are by Jules Verne. Evocative of foreign locations, action-packed plots, these titles seem to peek through the keyhole of the doorway into the book’s world. Around the World in 80 Days doesn’t tell us who, how or why, but still communicates an adventure that is time-sensitive and therefore urgent. Urgent to open that book and read it as fast as possible so that Phileas Fogg can reach his goal. The same goes for Journey to the Centre of the Earth, or From Earth to the Moon, or Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Other books that do this well are Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (“Murder?” you say as you read the title, provoking the classic question at the root of every mystery, “But whodunit?”), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain (At first it’s pretty much a case of “just what it says on the tin,” but at second glance you are prompted to ask WHY a Connecticut Yankee is IN King Arthur’s Court in the first place), The Secret Garden (of course now that we’re read the title, the garden isn’t so secret now, is it? But that begs the further question of why it was secret in the first place)…I could go on. 

My point being that a title doesn’t so much have to tell the prospective reader what the plot is, as a title needs to make the reader question what the plot might be.