How to Break All the Writing Rules

I am reading Darin Strauss’ new book, The Queen of Tuesday, and it is a strange book indeed. It’s part fiction, part memoir, part fantasy, part biography, and all revolving around an imagined affair between comedian Lucille Ball and the author’s grandfather. Many reviewers have noted the book’s strangeness — “feels divided into segregated lumps of ‘auto’ and ‘fiction’” (LA Times); “feels more like a thought experiment than a compelling story” (Kirkus); “grandiose and rather wacky” (Historical Novel Society) — and all of that is true. You might think this is reason enough to stop reading on Page 145, where I find myself today. But I am not going to stop reading. I think Darin Strauss is a brilliant writer and he’s creative and ambitious, and I am here for his weird book.

Part of the pleasure is precisely the fact that Strauss breaks all the rules. You can experience exactly how unsettling it is as a reader. This is gold for a book coach so that we can describe exactly what it feels like to have no clue who is speaking or where we are in time and space or who exactly the narrator is or what exactly that narrator’s purpose is. Having such a good example of the opposite thing will help us explain to other writers why they need to make room for the reader, how to make a clear, well-lit path for them, how to welcome them into the story.

So what rules does Strauss break?

● There is head-hopping — sometimes within the same paragraph.

● There is author intrusion — often in the form of info dumps.

● There is a bizarre mix of history, fantasy, and memoir, and it’s very hard to tell what is what.

● The language is often flowery and grandiose — overcooked, one reviewer called it.

● Time loops around on itself in bizarre ways. When writing sex scenes where you know sex happens (because he told you it would), it takes pages and pages and pages to get there, with flashbacks and flash-forwards.

● There are (I learned from this historical society review), actual historical events that are baldly misrepresented, such as the fact that I Love Lucy aired on Mondays, not Tuesdays.

And does he pull this off? Because the fact of the matter is that most of those reviews with the negative descriptions I quoted were actually positive or even rave reviews.

1.) He knows the rules he is breaking

He is not an ignorant writer who never bothered to learn the rules. He knows the rules inside and out. He teaches writing at NYU and has written 6 books. He was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction, won an American Library Association’s Alix Award, and won The National Book Critics Circle Award.

He is, in fact, part of the writing elite. Here are what some of his peers say about this book:

● “A home run!” — Gary Shteyngart, author of Lake Success

● “Read it!” — Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit from the Goon Squad and Manhattan Beach

● “Wonderful!” — Andrew Sean Greer, author of Less

So Darin Strauss knows what he is doing. He has proven he can follow the rules and it’s clear he knows he is breaking them.

2.) He’s intentional.

Strauss says he set out to write an “emotional rather than historical truth.” And I, for one, could feel that intention on every page. You can feel that there is something generous here — something bigger or deeper than the rules. You can feel the ambition and the striving of the writer.

In the afterword of the book (yup — I read it before I was finished reading the book), he says, “In families, at least in families like mine, a fact is interesting or useful only if it’s been encrusted into myth.” He is in the business of myth-making and myth-understanding. It’s very clear what he is up to even if the way he does it isn’t clear.

In an interview in Guernica, he explains even more:

“I wanted to try to make a book that was a greatest hits compilation. I had written historical fiction and contemporary fiction and memoir, and I was doing a bunch of nonfiction articles, so I thought it would be a challenge to see what I could do with that. Also, it was a way to pay homage to this woman who I thought was so cool, and to look at my grandfather…..It felt like the right way to tell it. That seems to be how a lot of writers are approaching fiction right now. Maybe it’s because the world is so crazy, and reality is so difficult to get a handle on, artists are deciding to use nonfiction and fiction together.”

Strauss had a vision, albeit an odd one, and he set out to bring it to life.

3.) He’s so good you can’t ignore him

Steve Martin said, “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” This maxim feels like it applies here with Darin Strauss. There is no question that he is good. Half a Life, the book that won the National Book Critics Circle award, would probably make the list of my all-time favorite memoirs. When we talk about the generosity of spirit and letting the reader IN, he does this so powerfully and beautifully. I love that book. I have often referenced it and taught from it, and it has resonated over many years for me.

Elizabeth Gilbert thinks he’s brilliant, too. She says, “Anything Darin Strauss writes is magic. I have been his fan since the beginning of time, and I will be his fan until the sun explodes.”

The whole conceit of The Queen of Tuesday is bold and daring — this question about memory and history and fantasy and the stories we tell and don’t tell, all tied up in ambition. It’s amazing — so rich. And on top of that, some of his sentences and descriptions are incandescent.

● “She feels her loneliness like a prop she’s dragged across the soundstage of her life.”

● “Lucille Ball was handy with a joke in ‘Stage Door,’ but she is no Groucho Marx. Lucille Ball hula’d her hips in ‘Dance, Girl, Dance,’ but she is no Carmen Miranda. Lucille Ball held a tune in ‘Hey Diddle Diddle,’ but is she an Ethel Merman? No, she is not an Ethel Merman…”

● “Those sexual hip explosions were for him a delicious anguish.”

● “Lucille has found herself in a rainy news seasonal; it won’t stop drizzling headlines.”

Strauss can break the rules because he’s good enough to break them.

4.) He does it all with so much stinking glee

This book is a romp. It’s a wild ride. He’s obviously having so much fun. It does not feel like the work of a tortured soul. It’s just… fun. And that, in my mind, buys him a lot of leeway. Publisher’s Weekly captured that reality when they said, “The book is so clearly a labor of love that it would be almost churlish to point out how labored it can feel…”

Strauss is not trying to win praise — or at least that is not what is driving him. In an interview with Caroline Leavitt, he speaks about acceptance and praise:

“The older I get and the more I write, I realize that you can never really control that stuff or chase that stuff…. I’m trying to get to this place where I’m just happy in the work…. If I’m happy with the work, it should stand. As long as I’m allowed to continue to do it, that should be enough.”

This is a writer who is loving his work, loving the challenge, loving that he gets to do it at all.

Should I ever work with a writer who wants to break all the rules, I will point to this book and say, “Great! Read this book and see how it’s done.”