The Strange Tale of My Debut Book Title

(Confusion Reigned.....)

I recently published an essay in Lit Mag News about the importance of choosing the right title for your work that reminded me of the challenges when a St. Martin's Press editor and I agreed to call my first collection Dancing on Tisha B'Av.

Tisha B'Av, literally the ninth of the month of Av, is a day of mourning in the summer that memorializes the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and many subsequent disasters to strike the Jewish people over the centuries.  It's not a time for anything festive at all, but the story was about a young Jewish man who comes out as gay, is kicked out of the small Orthodox congregation he loves and rather than go to services anywhere, he defiantly goes out to a club to dance.

There's a double meaning in the title which some Jewish readers got because there's an old legend that when the End of Days comes and the Temple is restored, there will be dancing on Tisha B'Av. Mourning will turn to joy.

The story had appeared in a well-reviewed anthology and got special notice from reviewers for doing something very new in American fiction.  They didn't know that the publisher of that anthology argued with  the editor about including my story.  The publisher thought it was "too different," which the anthology’s editor understood to mean "too Jewish." He held firm and the story got me more attention than I could have imagined.  The year it came out I was at an awards banquet and when I told people my name, they immediately connected it to the story.  One well-known author actually said, "I wish I had written that."

Given the very positive reception the story got, and my history of publishing in Jewish magazines and newspapers, it seemed the logical choice of title story for the book. But my editor and I never reckoned with the challenge the title would be when I went on a book tour. Managers and their minions asked me how to pronounce my name, but nobody asked me how to pronounce the title of the book. So when I was introduced, Dancing on Tisha B'Av was variously called Dancing on Tisha B'Avenue, Dancing on Toshiba, Dancing on Tricia B'Av and, my favorite, Dancing on the Tissue Box.

I was determined that my next book with St. Martin's Press, a novel, would not have an unusual title at all, and it was published as Winter Eyes, a pun on music by Schubert that the main character hears and whose name he misconstrues: Die Winterreise. 

No worries, right? Well, more than one book store owner told me that fans of my first book had asked for my new book about cars. . . .Winterize.

P.S.: As it happens, tomorrow evening is Erev Tisha B’Av, the eve of the day of mourning, reflection, and prayer. It occurs in the summer, but the date changes every year because the Jewish calendar is both lunar and solar, based on lunar months of 29 days alternating with 30 days.