Tag Archives: bildungsroman

07.23.24
by

Coming Home

Long ago there lived a boy beleaguered by the world. Everything was a potential threat. Bullies and demons lurked everywhere.  

Grownups were no help; they had their own problems. It was better to keep your head down. 

If life was good, why were so many people so sad?

The more he learned, the more confused he became. By the time he was a teenager, he was downright bewildered. 

This boy came into adulthood a bundle of neuroses and labored through the next decades to unlearn misconceptions about life and gradually to attain the art of contentment. 

The Long View

When he grew old and retired from work, when no longer besieged by the trials of midlife, the boy looked back on the whole span of his life. Oddly enough, recent years had become a messy blur; but he saw the childhood era with crystalline precision.

He saw much of pain and sorrow, but even more of joy and zest. He wanted to stand before his Maker and say, “Oh . . . now I see how this caused that, and how one thing led to another. . . .” Above all, he wanted to have it all make sense. 

But it didn’t. It was just a life. No matter whan angle he took, no matter which way he looked at it, there was nothing in his growing up that explained how he had arrived at grownup responsibilities with such a skewed, anxiety-ridden outlook that it took all his life to get over it. There was no rational understanding of that.

Well, that wasn’t good enough. Not by a long shot. 

Writing Therapy

When the boy decided to try being a serious writer, his dearest project became a reconstruction of that bygone era—one in which the joys and sorrows of a rather ordinary childhood balanced out and cast a benign new understanding across the mind-screen of the past. He would write a story where the forlorn hopes and muddled yearnings that lingered in his soul across all the intervening years could find a comfortable home at last. 

And, after a great deal of work, this strange project proved possible!

The catch was (there’s always a catch, ask Yossarian)—the catch was, it wouldn’t be the boy’s actual life. Oh, all the incidents of childhood would be there, accurately portrayed in an exact replica of the original setting; yes, of course, a few names would be changed to protect the innocent, as the announcer on “Dragnet” used to say; but every detail would be true. They would just be juxtaposed in such a way that there was a veiled form of causality. The things that happened in the story would have meanings that related to one another, and those meanings would form themes, and the whole thing would be immensely satisfying.

It would be a fiction. But satisfying. 

Isn’t that why we tell stories, Gentle Reader? To resurrect our past, but in a better way?

The story became a book, Izzy Strikes Gold!, about a twelve-year-old boy living in a small town in the 1950s. Izzy has to try to keep his family together, but what he most wants to do is fit in with his schoolmates. And all the adjustments he has to make to reconcile those conflicting goals give him an opportunity to grow a larger perspective.

The Fifties are so long ago now that the book counts as historical fiction. It’s also, as a matter of form, what we call a coming-of-age story (or a bildungsroman when we’re being snooty and pretending we know German). From a bookseller’s perspective, it is a middle-grade novel, because it’s axiomatic that a story about a twelve-year-old boy must be targeted at nine-to-twelve-year-old readers. Yet, as someone who remembers the Fifties quite clearly, I must tell you this book is a Nostalgic’s delight. Grandparents will enjoy it as much as their grandchildren. 

It came about simply because a boy grew up confused and was left with unsatisfactory longings. 

Whooppee!

I am sworn to secrecy on the identity of the boy, but if you’d like to meet him and hear about his journey as an author, boy and man, and maybe even buy a copy of the book and get it signed,and maybe win a fabulous, Fifties-themed door prize, I commend you to the Izzy Strikes Gold! Launch Party, 6:00 p.m. Wednesday, July 24.

Update: All the seats are taken for the live event, but you can catch the livestream at https://www.crowdcast.io/c/izzy-strikes-gold.

Blessings, 

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer

05.28.24
by

Here Comes Izzy

DEAR READER,

Your New Favorite Writer’s second novel, Izzy Strikes Gold! hits the streets July 24, but you can place your order now, for delivery then.

SUMMER 1957: Twelve-year-old Izzy, long on hope and short on cash, claws golden nuggets from the waters of a secret spring. His co-discoverer Collum swears him to secrecy.

Izzy hopes to be a regular kid, not just the class shrimp. Half his brain teems with schemes to fit in with his peers, while the other half struggles to keep his family from falling apart. 

Mom and Dad are at odds, Izzy helpless to save their marriage. The Russians launch the first artificial satellite, blighting Izzy’s hopes of space-age glory. Bullying Lyle dashes Izzy’s self-image; breathtaking Irma seems oblivious to his wistful ardor; and Grandpa, who taught him to be brave, wastes away in a hospital room.

Money could ease these woes—but Izzy has pledged silence about the gold in the hidden spring. 

Deep in dilemmas, how can Izzy hold on to hope? 

A FUNNY, SAD, UNFORGETTABLE JOURNEY, ROOTED IN THE AUTHOR’S OWN BOYHOOD

So What?

I may have mentioned this project once, twice, or three times in this space. That’s because I’m proud of this book. It’s a story that’s close to my heart.

Being the story of a 12-year-old boy, bookstores classify it as a “middle-grade” novel, meaning it’s for kids.

But we were all twelve years old once, and Izzy’s experiences, while unique to him, are darned near universal among Americans of a certain age. His adventures take place in 1957. Whether or not the Fifties were the time of your youth, you are likely to find things in this brief narrative that speak to your memories, and to your heart. 

It’s a story about a kid trying to fit in.

How You Fit In

If you will be in or near Madison, Wisconsin, on Launch Day—July 24, 2024—you are cordially invited to attend our gala Book Launch Party at Mystery to Me Bookstore. They will have enough copies for everybody who wants one, and I’ll be happy to sign your copy. Tickets are free, but you have to sign up in advance.

If you cannot attend the launch party, you can have your copy in hand shortly after July 24 by pre-ordering now at the publisher’s website.

Of course, you can always wait a couple of months and buy it at your favorite local bookstore; you may have place an order through them. Or get it on Amazon, if all else fails (Don’t look, it’s not there yet).

How To Use the Product

Read it. Then read it to, or give it to, your son, daughter, grandson, granddaughter, neice, nephew, or all of them (you’ll need extra copies). Some readers of recent generations may be astounded at certain things they will read in this book. You may have to assure them that yes, indeed, that’s how things were, not so very long ago.

Come to think of it, this is a book that could start all sorts of useful conversations. 

In case you’ve lost track, you can get it by clicking on the cover image just below: 

Happy reading!

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer

12.06.22
by

Thematic

After writing the historical novel which became Price of Passage and was published in August by DX Varos Publishing, my next project was a tale of life in the Fabulous Fifties. This is a subject I happen to know something about. 

The author reads to the fifth grade class at Winnequah School. Matt Fiedler photo.

But all I really know about life in the Fifties is from the viewpoint of a child—which I was at the time. So the protagonist of my Fifties novel is a twelve-year-old boy, Izzy Mahler. The story is told exclusively in Izzy’s voice. It is a coming-of-age story or—as we literati say in order to mystify everybody else—a bildungsroman. 

In this kind of story, a young central character goes through trials that may leave him or her somewhat disillusioned, perhaps a bit sad or even embittered, but better prepared for adult life. The hero emerges with a more realistic idea of the world and his or her place in it. Robert McGee, in his excellent book Story, calls this kind of thing, in movie terms, an “education plot.” It usually has an “up” ending: No matter what has gone before, the hero is now in a position to meet the future with hope and enhanced confidence.

Because my character, Izzy, is so young, the book inevitably will be sold as a book for children even younger. It is a middle grades book, and it has that kind of title: Izzy Strikes Gold! This doesn’t mean adults would not enjoy it. Adults my age will love it, because it reprises their own childhood. But as a middle grades book, it matters what young people think of it. 

I was delighted when Matt Fielder, my grandson’s fifth grade teacher at Winnequah Middle School, gave me an opportunity to read the book—all 41,000 words, in installments—to his class. That gives me more than twenty well-qualified beta readers.

It’s been a lovely experience so far. The kids are attentive and ask perceptive questions. Soon, as the book winds to its conclusion, we’ll discuss themes. Mr. Fiedler has been teaching the kids about themes in stories. 

Another angle. Matt Fiedler photo.

Now, here’s the thing: Some writers quite deliberately embed certain themes in their stories. I do not. I find it hard enough just to work out a story that moves along, keeps people interested, and comes to a satisfactory conclusion. I can’t be bothered with deeper meanings. But amazingly, once I have written a story, themes are there. They have snuck in by magic. 

We write from some place deep within ourselves. The things that matter in life have a way of showing up on the page, even when the author is solely focused on devising plot twists and employing the language in a way that makes things clear rather than confusing. Themes do emerge anyhow. 

I have a few thoughts about prominent themes in Izzy Strikes Out! But the writer only contributes half of the book. The reader, or the hearer, brings the other half, the reception of the story. So I’ll be interested to hear what themes my twenty beta readers talk about.

It could be that they take out of the book many things I never dreamed I was putting into it.

I can hardly wait to find out.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer