SNOWCLONES OVER BLOOMSBURY

~ Posted by Robert Butler, January 3rd 2012

The British edition of the giveaway newspaper Metro has a two-page spread today about new books to look forward to in 2012. "Top tomes to indulge in ..." shows how deeply the snowclone permeates publishing. Coined eight years ago, "snowclone" refers to a phrase that serves as a template for endless variations (as in yesterday's brainy is the new sexy).

Bloomsbury are publishing William Boyd's "Waiting for Sunrise" in February (which plays off "Waiting for Godot") and Rajesh Parameswaran's "I Am An Executioner" in May (which plays off everything from Soseki Natsume's "I Am A Cat" to Doug Hofstadter's "I am a Strange Loop"). Hamish Hamilton publish Alain de Botton's "Religion for Atheists" this month (which is not unlike "Philosophy for Dummies").

The one that crosses the line is Nathan Englander's "What We Talk About When We Talk about Anne Frank", which Weidenfeld & Nicolson publish next month. It plays off Raymond Carver's "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" (1981). But that has already been played off by Haruki Murakami's "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running" (2008). It's what we talk about when we talk about snowclones.

We journalists are always using snowclones as headlines. The article on Kim Jong Un in this week's Economist is headlined, "We need to talk about Kim" (which we certainly do). But that's a hook into a piece, one of hundreds on the same subject. The drawback with snowclones as book titles is that they diminish something that has to exist on its own merits. The Anne Frank book will always sound derivative.

Better to be less literal and have more fun with your cloning. There's a promising trend in book titles with French themes that play off Julian Barnes's "Flaubert's Parrot" (1984). We've spotted "Proust's Overcoat", "Balzac's Omelette" and even "Voltaire's Bastards". Plenty of scope for more: we look forward to "Simenon's Ashtray", "Baudelaire's Bathtowel", and "Houllebecq's Laptop".

Robert Butler is online editor of Intelligent Life