Soft Hypermarket

If French comics can be said to have started more than a century ago (with Becassine, the simple country girl, or the pretentious Fenouillard family, drawn by Christophe, and Herge’s hero Tintin celebrating his 70th birthday this year), the modern comic book in France owes its current status to the new talent and new publishers that appeared in the 1960s, who found a new market in the social and political counterculture that created the May 1968 revolution. At least this is what Greg Fallon, president of BA Comics thinks.

Just as the 1968 revolution was, like the 1789 one, as much a bourgeois as a working-class affair, so the readership of comic books today remains resolutely bourgeois – 61 percent of families in the middle classes regularly read and buy bandes dessinees, compared to 43 percent of the working class. And just as revolutionary aspirations have become muted with time, so the character of the BD has evolved from the anarchism, satire, and escapism of work in the 1960s and 1970s by artists such as Bretecher and Gottlib toward subtler themes of character development and more ironic humor, as in the work of F’Murr and Maester.

The same change can be seen in the treatment of classic literary texts in comic-book form. While some works of Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Gustave Flaubert, and Honore de Balzac appeared in the 1970s in illustrated and simplified versions mainly for the educational market, these have long since disappeared, replaced in schools by videos of television adaptations or films. The legacy of classic texts exists either in references to the classics, ancient and modern, in contemporary humor, or in new themes developed from old models. One collaboration among designer Marc-Renier, writer Cothias, and colorist Marie-Noelle Bastin extends the Dumas story of The Man in the Iron Mask over a series of new adventures; the fifth, Le Secret de Mazarin, was published by Glenat in 1998.

Another strand of the comic book sits between homage and pastiche, such as stories set in England (Floch & Riviere’s recent Underground and Blake and Mortimer series, both set where Hitchcock meets Agatha Christie), while Tardi’s stories of Adele Blanc-Sec are set in a 19th-century Paris seemingly influenced by Edgar Allan Poe.

Prior to Heuet’s Combray, the only major adaptation of a literary model in the last ten years was Tardi’s 1994 version of Celine’s Voyage to the End of the Night, one of the darkest and most pessimistic works of French 20th-century fiction, which was presented as a complete text illustrated with small, heavy monochrome images. It is closer to an artist’s book than to traditional BD (its length – 192 pages – and heavy dependence on text set it apart from the standard 48 A4 pages of full color). Tardi’s reputation as an established BD author justifies the book’s location on the BD shelves. Combray is full color and slightly larger than A4, but uses a 72-page length to tell a story that takes 258 pages in the standard English edition. Combray centers on the narrator’s childhood, both in the family’s house in a country village and in late 19th-century Paris, and introduces a number of the characters, including Swann, Gilberte, and Bloch, who reappear in later volumes.

The first volume of Remembrance of Things Past was published (at the author’s expense) in 1913 and the last two in 1927, five years after his death. His reputation was created not so much in France as elsewhere in the world; he entered the French literary canon only in the 1950s, when his complete works were published in the prestigious Pleiade series. His use of evocative and insistent language, and his themes of memory, disillusion, and art, link him to 20th-century writing, although his subject matter – the social life of the bourgeoisie – and grand gallery of characters harken back to Balzac, Trollope, and other 19th-century models. Perhaps because of its modernity, the novel has always been assumed to have been autobiographical. There is certainly a consistency between Proust’s views and his narrator’s, and points of matching detail between, for example, his parents’ house in Ilieres, near Chartres in France, and the fictional house at Combray. The extent of the autobiographical assumption has blinded some critics to certain creative aspects of his writing – for example, his humor.

Stephane Heuet has also assumed a strong autobiographical presence and carefully researched the locations known to Proust, the artists he knew, and the theater and opera he saw. He also read Remembrance – all 12 volumes – 14 times in preparation.

“The first time I read Proust was in my late teens, and I found it difficult and dull,” he says. “The language was complex and the cultural and social milieu unknown to me. It was only on rereading Proust later that the passion of his quest for truth and honesty, and the extraordinarily visual nature of his text, came home to me, so I decided to create a comic book version that would ideally appeal both to those familiar with Proust and to those who have not read him, or started and been discouraged.”

With Combray completed, he is now working on a two-volume set of Within a Budding Grove, to be followed by The Sweet Cheat Gone and Time Regained. Though this selection does not follow the strict lines of the original, it will, Heuet says, provide a complete narrative to the reader unfamiliar with Proust, encompassing the works central themes of hope, deception, and loss, within the frame of the narrator’s own experiences. He will then produce Swann in Love (in the original, the second part of the first volume), an independent story set before the narrator’s birth but prefiguring the narrator’s own experience.

Heuet’s main difficulty, as he sees it, has been in selecting images that will carry the narrative forward, while preserving enough of the original language to convey its tone, and balancing these elements within the format of the BD. It is his first attempt at a bande dessinee. “While I can always plead ignorance of the conventions of the medium,” he says, “if I had understood what would be involved when I started, I don’t know if I would have begun at all!”

He has also come in for a fair share of criticism from Proust lovers, for his necessary abandonment of the long, nuanced, complex descriptions of individual emotions and reactions that Proust’s style embodies, and from comic book enthusiasts who dislike his drawing style and his dependence on text links. Heuet describes his own drawing style – a tad defensively, perhaps – as Tintinesque, meaning a line of even density and flat, ungraded color, with a minimum of detail, especially in facial expressions. “This allows the reader to follow the action and the characters more easily,” Heuet insists, “and Proust has such a forbidding reputation for complexity that I wanted to show that he could be read and understood simply.”

Combray sold a respectable 20,000 copies in its first six months, which compares to 50,000 for a new volume of an established popular strip or a year’s sales of Swann’s Way, the most popular volume of the original text, combining hardback and paperback sales. It remains to be seen whether the whole task of bringing Proust into the BD world will create a new readership for the original, and whether the format will support the more thoughtful, less active evolution of the rest of the narrative.

Indeed, the appearance of Combray is perhaps a signal of change in the world of BD itself. The comic book buyer of book chain FNAC’s Paris stores says the market for bandes dessinees moves in waves: “Ten years ago, everyone was saying that BD was dead, that it had run out of inspiration. But a new generation of author/designers came along and reinvigorated it. And new publishers have appeared, interested in developing new talents.”

Delcourt, which published Combray in 1998 as well as an excellent rendition of part of Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows, was founded by a collector of bandes dessinees, and experiments with untried as well as established formats. But access to multimedia, either onscreen or online, is growing in France, and it is not clear whether the comic book format can retain its dominance. Already, many of the top graduates of French and Belgian graphic design schools are being drawn to television and cinema animation, whether in Europe or Canada and the U.S. While the levels of graphic skill in bandes dessinees stay high and varied, the formula is beginning to lose its edge, and publishers are looking at new solutions. In 1998, Casterman published adventure series for some established heroes, including Blake and Mortimer, that use not only a different format but also a graphic approach based on text (letters and faxes) as well as illustrations. But if you start killing off the heroes, where do you go from there?

I quit my day job in 1991. Since then, I’ve had economic incentives that go with my urgent need to put words down on paper: The more I write, the longer the wolf stays away from my door. I stared out as a full-time free lancer with two novel tracks and a short-fiction track; that went to three novel tracks, then three novel tracks and a short-fiction track, and finally to four novel tracks.

I’m a Sci-Fi freak!

I’m lucky in several ways. First, I happen to be able to write very clean first-draft copy; if I couldn’t do that, my way of doing things wouldn’t work at all, and some people just can’t. Most important of all, though, I’m lucky enough to be married to a fellow science fiction writer, who understands my brand of craziness and helps shield me from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Much of the work I do lies near the intersection of science fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction. Not too long ago, a reviewer said of one of my novels, “The reader comes away from this book somehow feeling that a historical period that never was has been accurately portrayed.” That trompe l’oeil effect is exactly what I try to create. Making it work takes a good deal of research. How the research relates to the writing may be worth talking about.

For the kinds of the things I write, most of which have historical backgrounds, getting as many of the details right as I can is important in helping my readers suspend disbelief. Knowing, say, what the washroom of an 1880s Pullman car was like helps bring the created world to life for them. Research also illuminates character and lets the writer use or adapt incidents that have the unmistakable feel of authenticity because they really happened. The world has a more fertile imagination than any writer. No one would have the nerve to invent the Fourth Crusade or the three lost cigars that led to the Battle of Antietam or any of the innumerable other things, large and small, that make the world what it is today. Learning about some of those things, combining them in new and interesting ways, is part of what I do. Research of this sort gives your world a lived-in feel, and creates the impression in the reader that pieces of it don’t disappear when your characters aren’t looking directly at them.

You need to read widely, probably more widely than will ever show up in your story or novel. When I use one paragraph of a book I’ve read to give me a couple of lines’ worth of telling detail, I figure “That one’s paid for itself.” The thing is, till you do the reading, you don’t–and can’t–know which paragraph you’ll need.

Having said all that, a couple of warnings here. It’s easy to let the research seduce you. At some point, you have to be able to say, “All right, now I’m going to sit down and write, dammit. If I find out more cool stuff later, I’ll stick it into the manuscript when I’m polishing–or else I’ll start planning a sequel.” Every pro out there knows people who’ve spent the past five or ten years researching a novel that, all too likely, will never, ever get written.

PROBABLY even more important, you don’t want to put all your research into the story. That way lie the great expository lumps and the “I’ve done my homework and you’re going to suffer for it” syndrome. Suppose there are 500 key facts about the world you’re creating. If you set them all out before the reader, he’ll bog down. Be selective. The trick of the business is to show, oh, maybe twenty of those key facts, but to do so in such a way as to suggest, with those twenty, that of course you know all 500.

When you’re doing research, you need to bear in mind the difference between primary and secondary sources. Primary sources are those contemporary with the events about which they’re talking; secondary sources date from after the facts. The more primary sources you can use–the better. When you work from secondary sources, someone is already standing between you and the period about which you’re writing. This is not to say that primary sources won’t have biases. But they’re the biases of the people who actually participated in the events about which you’re trying to learn, and, as such, much more useful to the writer.

Not all research comes from books. If you can possibly do something yourself, do it. This not only gives your writing a real feeling it can’t get any other way, it can also be a lot of fun.

If you don’t know something, odds are you have a friend who does. Don’t be shy. People are often not just willing but eager to help writers, especially those who show they’ve gone a long way on their own.

Remember, it’s not just extraordinary experience that resonates in writing. The ordinary counts, too. You’ll have trouble writing convincingly about falling in–or out of–love or working in an office or broiling a steak unless you’ve done it. Your characters won’t come only from historical figures, either. They’d better not, anyhow. They’ll be made up of bits and pieces of people you’ve known through the years–and of bits and pieces of you, too. A retentive memory is a handy thing to have in this business.

At the newspaper where I work, we recently had a spirited discussion about freelancing for other local publications. (In the newspaper world, “spirited” means a discussion that stops just short of throwing chairs at each other. Merely cursing and impugning your colleagues’ parentage is considered a “friendly” debate.)

Are writers as extinct as this typewriter???

The newspaper has no problem with its employees writing for national publications (such as this one) and other periodicals that clearly don’t compete with the newspaper for readers. But defining “local competition” can be tricky. At spirited issue was whether journalists on our staff should be permitted to freelance for the local weekly alternative newspapers and such magazines as our two city magazines and a couple of monthly business journals. Everyone seemed to agree that writing for the other daily newspaper in the market (congenially referred to as “that rag”) should be off limits. Beyond that obvious aid and comfort to the enemy, however, consensus was hard to come by.

Our staff debate was perhaps more pointed than most questions over moonlighting as a writer–here we have people employed full-time as journalists, in a competitive market–but every writer with a regular paycheck must figure out where to draw the lines between freelancing and obligations to an employer. Such issues crop up regardless of whether your regular job involves writing in some fashion.

Is it all right, for example, to run up long-distance charges at the office where you work as an accountant, doing interviews for a freelance writing assignment? Obviously not–at least that’s what most ethicists and your employer would say. But what about using your employer’s phone and your own telephone charge card during your lunch hour?

Welcome to the realm of “spirited” debate.

Questions about moonlighting, both ethical and practical, are more pressing for nonfiction writers than for those authors who just make up stuff. We have to worry about research and interviews, about filling our notebooks with facts. (I know, fiction writers often must do research, too. But theirs is more flexible and less at the heart of what they do.) While we may be able to choose when we actually sit down and write, we have less control over everything that comes before sitting down at the keyboard.

Short of spending all your vacation days and calling in sick whenever you get an assignment, how is a nonfiction freelancer with a steady job supposed to arrange interviews, work the phone or hunt down sources? And how much can you take advantage of the access and expertise afforded by your regular job without putting that weekly paycheck at risk?

Some of the tactics a nonfiction freelancer must adopt to write while working 40 hours a week are so creative they inspire awe and envy in our fiction-writing peers.

Working Hard or Hardly Working?

Successful and less-stressful moonlighting starts with being smart about what assignments you tackle. I’ve juggled a freelancing career and a 9-to-5 career (well, sometimes it’s more like 8- to-7) for nearly 20 years now, and I’ve kept my sanity by knowing my limits.

The ideal moonlighting assignment, of course, requires hardly any research at all. Drawing on your own life experiences and expertise for articles makes it easy to combine writing with regular work. This monthly column, for example, springs largely from my well of experiences (and those of writing friends and colleagues), as well as from the reading and keeping up with the field that I’d do anyway. Moreover, since I generate my own topics, it’s easy to coordinate any research with the rest of my life. (Please don’t tell any of this to my editors at WD–let’s keep it our little secret.)

Maybe you have a field of deep expertise that you can tap, whether for a regular column or for a flurry of feature articles. What subject do you know so well you can write about it off the top of your head? (A side benefit to this approach is that your in-depth knowledge makes it easier to spot hot stories before the popular press picks up on them, which likewise makes you more attractive to an editor.) If you know dolls better than any normal person ought to, consider queries on topics in the doll-collecting world. If your passion is video games, well, the newsstands are overflowing with glossy magazines for gamers.

Here, too, is where your regular job can come in handy. Think of those hours you spend at the office as research. Whatever you do, whether it’s insurance adjusting or pharmaceutical sales, there’s surely a trade magazine devoted to it. Depending on your job, you may also be on the cutting edge of a subject with more popular appeal. A computer technician by day could spend nights and weekends querying MacUser, Byte and PC Magazine. A psychology teacher might popularize her knowledge in self-help articles for Self and Parents.

But be careful when mining your job for articles. Don’t reveal company secrets. Don’t write anything you wouldn’t want your colleagues–or, worse, your boss–to read (they have lives outside the office, too, remember, and might see your article). Don’t take advantage of your dual role as employee and author to rack up perks that nonwriting employees wouldn’t get. If your regular job also involves writing, for heaven’s sake don’t write for the competition–whatever management, after “spirited” debate, decides the competition is.

Reviews and Recreation

Other types of assignments also seem suited for the evening and weekend freelancer. Either these stories let you pick the time for research, or they naturally allow you to research at the hours when you don’t have to be at your desk.

Reviews of all kinds fit well into a freelancer’s inflexible schedule. Consider product reviews in some field where you have special know-how–not only book reviews, but evaluations of quilting equipment, computer software, kitchen gear or whatever else you might know what you’re talking about.

For example, I write regularly for a publication called Link-Up, which covers online and other databases. I’ve been going online since the days of 300-baud modems, and I know something about research needs from my writing and reporting work. So I can craft a meaningful review of almost any database, however esoteric the subject. The round-the-clock availability of such online offerings means I can explore them when my schedule permits. As with most reviews, not much interviewing is required; what questions I do need to ask I can usually handle by e-mail. (E-mail, by the way, is a terrific, timewarping tool for eliciting basic answers to questions without having to pick up the phone during office hours.)

If your interests lie more on, say, the stage than in cyberspace, maybe you can write theater reviews for a local paper or magazine. Almost anything related to arts and leisure–music, dance, night life, even sports–makes a good target because, by its very nature, it’s likely to happen when you (and most other 9-to-5ers) can take part.

Similarly, any subject spinning off shopping–whether it’s haute couture or the annual “best of” stories that are the bread and butter of city magazines–can usually be researched during nonworking hours. If the stores are open, you can fill your notebook.

Restaurant reviews can be another wonderful writing opportunity–and you get to dine out on somebody else’s dime, too. Among my first freelance assignments were several regional restaurant roundups for Travel & Leisure, all researched in the evening with the pleasant company of my new bride. The only downside: Those assignments almost spoiled me for anything else!

(If you want to pursue restaurant reviewing, try to develop some proof of your proficiency and the quality of your palate. Take some courses at a local cooking school. Or maybe you worked your way through college at a restaurant–not, please, the cafeteria. Whatever you do, though, don’t say in your query, “I don’t know much about restaurants, but I have the most important qualification–I love to eat.” Innumerable applicants for a restaurant-reviewer position I recently filled used that line; all went into the reject pile. And notice how well my full-time job experiences just informed my freelance writing!)

Travel is another field well suited, almost by definition, to the moonlighting writer. Whether your trips require a vacation from your day job or you can plan weekend getaways, use them as opportunities to gather research for travel articles. (For more on this subject, see my columns in the December 1995 and January 1996 Writer’s Digest–articles I researched, of course, while taking a vacation.)

The Most Bang for Your Buck

As you spread your writing wings, however, inevitably you’ll want to tackle some assignments that require in-depth interviews, phone research and in-person investigation.

Sometimes these stories can still be done during your off-hours. If your subject is busy and finds it hard to squeeze in an interview during the day, volunteer to go to his or her home. A bonus of this approach is that you get to see your subject in less-guarded surroundings, and the subject’s home offers details that can illuminate his or her character.

You may be tempted to arrange lunch or dinner interviews. Don’t. Successful interviewing can be challenging enough without the added burden of handling a knife and fork.

Other assignments will require you to spend a precious vacation day. You shouldn’t be too quick to take on an article that costs you hard-earned vacation time, but the math may make sense: If you can make $1,000 for writing an article that absolutely requires you to use one vacation day, unless you make more than about $250,000 a year ($1,000 per workday x five days a week x 52 weeks a year), it may be a worthwhile trade-off. (Of course, you’ll need to devote more than a single day to all your writing and research, but there you’re spending your unpaid time, evenings and weekends, not your paid vacation.) A plum assignment may even be worth taking a day or two off from your job without pay, as long as that action doesn’t sound alarm bells with your employer.

When you do devote vacation time to an assignment, make the most of it. Do all your secondary research beforehand, on your own time, so that you get everything else you need in just one in person experience. If you must travel to an interview, shoot for a Friday or Monday appointment so you can make half the journey on the weekend. Or get up early and take the red-eye home, so you can do it all in one (very busy, but very productive) day.

When I interviewed a number of business tycoons for a magazine series on American success stories, for example, I had to take off from my regular job to fulfill the assignment. But each profile cost me just a single vacation day: I did all my homework in advance, planned all my questions, jetted in and out on the same day, and, throughout, kept uppermost in my mind the exact angle and theme of each assignment. All the advance research and the subsequent organizing and writing was done on evenings and weekends. Since the magazine paid pretty well, the interview days seemed like a good investment of my vacation time.

But such assignments can be intermittent and undependable, and freelance work doesn’t earn-you any paid vacation days. So I offer one more piece of advice for the moonlighting author:

Don’t quit your day job.