Bright, sunny days. Crisp, chill nights. Views of turning leaves, smells of burning leaves. Football weather. Harvesters’ weather. Apples-mashed-into-cider weather.
I love October. Perhaps because, here in Wisconsin, it’s apt to be the last gasp of glory before the hammer comes down. Cold and snow are just around the corner.
If you’re German, especially if you’re Bavarian, it means beer and pretzels. Oktoberfest is so well loved that it starts in September! The Müncheners like to get, you know, a running start.
Tsar Nicholas II in 1912. Public Domain.
V. I. Lenin in 1920. Photo by Pavel Zhukov. Public Domain.
But suppose you’re Russian? A different story—one which lacks the essential element of gemütlichkeit. October 1905 was the height of Russia’s “first revolution,” which began with workers’ protests the preceding winter and swelled over the following months. By October, Tsar Nicholas II was so weakened that he issued an “October Manifesto,” pledging to create a legislative assembly, halt censorship and violations of freedom of association, and expand the right to vote.
The Tsar’s promises defused the immediate crisis, but revolutionary urges kept on simmering. Partisans who wanted to implement the Tsar’s reforms were called Octobrists. Their opponents were Kadets, or Constitutional Democrats, who sought a fuller reform program. In the ensuing squabbles, all political order broke down until 1917, when Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks launched a new revolution in St. Petersburg—the second revolution that year.
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Lenin’s revolution started on 7 November, but since Russia was still on the old Julian calendar, the date has always been commemorated as 25 October. The Octobrists of 1905 were steramrolled by another October only twelve years later. Octobrists turned out to be not the bright dawn of a new order, but the last harrumph of the old.
The new order, which began in October 1917, was not all that happy. It spelled death for tens of millions and great suffering for Russia and many neighboring nations.
Sputnik I, 1957, replica. Image by Soyuz235, Public Domain.
On the bright side, the Communist revolution gave fledgling author Tom Clancy a great title for his debut novel: The Hunt for Red October.
Another October victory for Russia was the launch of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, on 8 October 1957, near the fortieth anniversary of the Soviet state. Perhaps you’ve seen the film October Sky about the “rocket fever” induced in young American students by the successful flight of Sputnik. It’s even referenced in my own middle-grade book Izzy Strikes Gold!
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What about us? Does America have any October phenomena to compare with those of other countries? I nominate the good old American “October Surprise.”
With major elections held in early November, we’ve developed a national tradition of low, desperate trickery. If your candidate trails in October, what beter time to cause public mayhem to which your opponent must respond, or drop some obscure besmirchment on your opponent’s reputation, one that’s difficult to understand or pin down? Dropped late enough in October, the October Surprise works because the targeted candidate doesn’t have enough time to make an appropriate response to the situation or marshal exonerating facts.
The thing is, with large numbers of ballots being cast and submitted in the months before Election Day, the October Surprise is losing a lot of its electoral punch. It may go the way of the dodo bird, and then we’ll have to fall back on Jack-o-Lanterns for fun.
Sixty-five years ago today, the Russians fired Sputnik into the October sky.
Sputnik. NASA photo. Public Domain.
Of all people to kick off the Space Age—the Russians!
“Humiliation” does not capture the angst of a twelve-year-old American boy, which is what I was at the time.
“Disaster” would be closer.
Some adults may have been startled that humans had flung a projectile into space—a basketball-sized object that immediately took up a patrol of the heavens, blinking and beeping its way across the sky once every ninety-six minutes.
No twelve-year-old boy—as I was, at the time—batted an eyelash at the fact of space travel. Robert Heinlein, Lester Del Rey, and other fiction writers had conditioned us to expect it with confidence. But it was to have been done by Americans.
That the Russians launched the satellite was wrong on four counts.
First of all, the Russians were Bad Guys. They were communist dictators. They mocked everything we, the Free World, stood for. They tried to undermine us. They were evil.
Second, everybody knew the Russians could not invent anything. A-bombs and H-bombs, they had acquired by trickery. Spies like the Rosenbergs had given them our secrets. Virtually all goods in Russia—cars, airplanes, telephones—were copies of American models.
Third, since Russia was our enemy in a colossal struggle for world power, having their hardware pass over the United States sixteen times a day raised the specter of a surprise attack from outer space—maybe in the near future. This was a big-time worry for Pentagon planners.
My Own Nemesis
The fourth consideration was peculiar to me. Sputnik arrived on a day that was already my downfall. We were moving from Streator, Illinois (population 17,500), to Kenosha, Wisconsin. Kenosha was a much larger city: It was industrial, foreign, and most of all, it was not Streator, where I had oodles of friends.
I was hardly in a mood to understand the great advantages of my father’s upward job change.
On Saturday morning, October 5, the one appliance that had not been packed in the moving van was a small table radio. Mom was about to unplug it to put in the car with the other odds and ends when the CBS Radio News announced the launching of Sputnik. They even played a recording of the new satellite’s strange, plaintive beep.
That beep signaled that not only had my parents betrayed me by uprooting me from my accustomed home, but the treacherous Russians were piling on. The failure of America’s Vanguard rocket a few months later only added to the misery.
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Now that it’s sixty-five years past, I’ve learned to be philosophical about it. I even have some good memories of Kenosha. But the emotions of a star-struck young lad still resonate after all those years.
I hope all your orbits, Gentle Reader, will be happy ones.
A sweet little secret of the Lit Biz—which I am about to let you in on, Dear Reader—is this:
After giving months, or maybe years, of your life to writing an 80,000-word novel, you must then tell the story again, accurately and with zing!, in one page.
That’s only if you want anyone to have a chance to read it.
“What, one page?” I hear you cry. “Dear New Favorite Writer, that’s hardly possible.”
The situation is not quite as bad as it seems. You can single space.
Why Is this Trip Necessary?
Agents, editors, and publishers want to see a one-page synopsis to decide whether there is any point in reading your whole manuscript. An agent or independent publisher receives a thousand or more queries a year—a query being a proffer of a new fiction manuscript the author hopes will get the green light for a traditional publishing contract.
The agent or publisher can represent, or publish, only a handful of titles a year. A dozen, or two dozen, perhaps. So barriers are built, like the steep waterfalls and boiling fish-ladders of the Pacific Northwest that keep all but the strongest of salmon from reaching their spawning grounds and scoring the Darwinian reward of posterity.
Salmon try to leap a waterfall. Photo by Marvina Munch, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Public Domain
The Synopsis
The synopsis is one of those barriers. Does it tell the whole story? Does it tell the story clearly? Is the story interesting? If not, fuhgeddaboudit.
Unlike the marketing blurb on the back cover of the book, which will give enticing hints of the story while gingerly avoiding spoilers, the synopsis—meant for publishing industry eyes only— must reveal the whole plot, including the ending. If it does the job well enough, the author’s reward is a request from the agent or publisher to send the full manuscript for review.
Thus, you have made it over the first waterfall on your way upstream. The next waterfall is steeper. After they read the whole manuscript, they may pass. But at least your synopsis has earned you a chance at success.
Which brings us back to the impossibility of writing your whole novel in one page. But trying to do so is actually a valuable exercise. An amazing number of characters, phrases, and plot twists must be left on the cutting room floor. What remain are only the real essentials, connected causally in whole different way from what the meandering course of the book itself required.
Izzy’s Novel
Now, Gentle Reader, I’m going to do something that’s almost never done. I’m going to give you a peek at the one-page synopsis of my new middle-grade novel about a boy named Izzy Mahler. You will see it before any agent or publisher sees it.
WARNING: If you hope to read the book after it is published, if your memory for plot details is good, and if you can’t stand reading a story when you know what’s going to happen, AVERT YOUR EYES NOW.
For those who remain, here is the synopsis, preceded by a one-sentence logline.
Synopsis
In 1957 Illinois, class runt Izzy Mahler just wants to become a regular kid as the world falls apart around him—but can he shield America from Sputnik, and will a secret gold mine save his struggling family?
It’s 1957. IZZY MAHLER, 12, youngest and smallest of eighth-graders in Plumb, Illinois, longs to be respected as a regular kid, not battered by bullies like LYLE HAYCOCK,13. Izzy and fellow Space Patrol afficionado COLLUM GUNDERSON, 14, find a shiny gold rock in the woods near their homes on Wry Lane. Collum swears Izzy to secrecy, because the discovery is their special thing, which Collum’s three half-brothers must not share. Emerging from the woods, they meet IRMA RUGER, 12—Izzy’s third-grade flame. Izzy keeps mum, the gold rock safe in his pocket. But the secrecy irks Izzy. If the gold is real, it could save his parents’ marriage, which is foundering over money. He visits the public library to learn about gold, but all he garners is a couple of cool space travel books. On his way home from the library, he inadvertently goads the MORIARTY BROTHERS into a baseball game: Court Street versus Wry Lane, to be played in two weeks. Izzy recruits players for the Wry Lane team, filling out the roster with physically impaired and oddly-named MUTT-MUTT CORNER.
Izzy’s underemployed DAD, a war veteran with a science degree, goes into a part-time upholstery business with PATCH PAGELKOPF, a wise old jack-of-all-trades. Izzy interrogates a pawnbroker and learns that even a little gold is worth a lot of money. But he prays Dad’s extra cash from the upholstery sideline, on top of his night-shift job at a glass bottle factory will be enough to keep the family together, so Izzy can keep the gold secret. Time comes for the Big Game: Lyle Haycock, playing for Court Street, shoves and harries Izzy mercilessly. The fey Mutt-mutt Corner makes an oddball play to win the game for Wry Lane, closing out Izzy’s summer on a high note. In the fall, heart-stopping Irma Ruger is once more a schoolmate, adding spice to life. Things are going swell!
Sputnik. NASA photo. Public Domain.
But the glass factory lays off the midnight shift. As Izzy’s family reels from Dad’s job loss, the Russians launch SPUTNIK, the first man-made satellite—which Izzy, furious, takes as a personal insult. Now suddenly, America wants young scientists. Izzy can easily see himself as a space opera hero. He and Collum, advancing America’s space program, launch a skyrocket over the local brickyard, but a night watchman calls the cops and the boys must flee through the woods. With his parents’ marriage on the rocks again, Dad vanishes. Izzy wonders whether he’ll come back. At a science expo for young students, Izzy learns that Irma has a brighter future in science than he. MOM tries to explain to Izzy that Dad was damaged by combat, but try as he might, Izzy cannot picture Dad as a war hero.
Dad comes home. He’s been up North and landed a new job that will make use of his science degree. Seems Dad’s wedding ring is all the gold the family needs. But Mom, Izzy, and kid sister CHRISTINE must move to Pikeport, Wisconsin—Dad’s new work site, after Christmas. Izzy is devastated. Just when he is fitting into kid society in Plumb, he gets yanked away. Walking home from the town’s Christmas pageant, Izzy ponders his improved status as a kid among kids. Lyle Haycock waylays him and starts a fight, which becomes a conversation—one in which Izzy learns the facts of life in a truly broken family. Only Dad’s new job up North can spare Izzy from sharing Lyle’s crummy fate. After Christmas, the Mahlers move to Pikeport. On their way out of town, Izzy gives his new baseball glove to Mutt-mutt Corner, wishing him a good 1958 season. Up North, Pikeport is a hard place to adjust to, but Izzy finds a couple of new friends. His morale improves when America finally manages a successful launch of its own satellite in January 1958.
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There you have it, Dear Reader—my latest book, soon to join the crowd of manuscripts battering their way upstream in the world of publishing.
When it comes out in paperback, do yourself a favor and read it. Especially because of all the ’50s reminiscences included, it’s a fun book for grown-ups as well as kids.
Blessings,
Larry F. Sommers, Your New Favorite Writer
Author of Price of Passage—A Tale of Immigration and Liberation.
Price of Passage
Norwegian Farmers and Fugitive Slaves in Pre-Civil War Illinois
