Writer gets chance for second life: Exiles

Though this blog is not meant to be self-promotional, it happens that most of the reading I did yesterday was of "Exiles." The good news: Soho is bringing out a pb edition in September! That's great, because it's a chance for a second life for a book that really never found its readership, or at least I think that. A pb edition also gives the writer a rare chance at a 2nd life: I can, within some limits I guess, make changes to the published edition. So that's what I've been doing, going through the published version (and the last word version I sent to Soho) and marking a few changes. To be honest, Exiles has been subject to some harsh criticism on the blogosphere and elsewhere. I wish that didn't both me, though it does. I still believe in the book and have some faith in it and will not make wholesale changes to appease those who hated it or didn't get it. So be it. I have stopped reading reviews and commentary because I am too sensitive to criticism - that's a fault, I know, because you can certainly learn something from all criticism - but I'm under no obligation to suffer, either. As my friend Andy noted, if you accept the positive reviews you have to accept the bad ones, too. So I'm "accepting" neither - a fake indifference, I admit, but at least it preserves a bit of my sanity. So, what changes? For those interested, here's what I've learned:

deserters v resisters. The terms, as the character in the book discuss, are not interchangeable, deserters (leaving the military) being a subset of resisters (actively opposing the war). In some context, deserters are of higher stature - taking on much greater risk. But the term is also a bit derogatory. I think I overused it in the published edition, and have sometimes changed "deserters" to resisters or Americans when, on latest look, I thought it was more true to the characters and context.

lay/laid/lain: why do we have this in the English language? Even after copy editing and multiple reads, the usually annoying word grammar check found two misuses of lay/laid, which I corrected. (I should have used grammar check earlier - virtually never find it useful and have it turned off - but I gave it a runthrough mainly looking for typos, and it found none.)

The temple: One intelligent but unsympathetic reader took issue with a reference to a Shinto temple on a hippie farm in Ohio. He said Shinto never took root in America, it's strictly Japanese. Maybe so. I have a memory of a group of proselytes in NYC in the '60s trying to draw American students into a Shinto group (handing out cards on streetcorners, etc. - I even went to a service in someone's apartment). I wouldn't stake my life on it, though - could have been Zen or some other form of Buddhism. You know what? It doesn't matter to me in the least, it's totally irrelevant to the novel, so I changed Shinto to Buddhism. (Same reader thought it laughable that there was reference to being afraid of a charge of treason - he said that would have been impossible in that we never declared war, etc. - which may be true, but exiles in Sweden definitely talked about this possibility with fear. Nobody knew what the future would be or what consequences any resister could face.)

My friend Bill hated the reference to a drain in the floor (of a prison cell) "like an open wound." He correctly pointed out that a would is the opposite of a drain, it oozes in fact, and I agreed and changed that simile to something equally disturbing, maybe more so (reference to matted hair and toiletpaper).

A friendly reader correctly pointed out that there is no such thing as a "golden Lab," so I changed the reference to the correct yellow Lab. I have since seen this same error in at least one other novel.

I think that's it. Still open to more observations, if anyone's got 'em.