In Two Debut Novels, The Plot Is Familiar, But By No Means Vulgar

OR, What Do You Read, My Lord? Words, Words, Words…

I was surprised, after reading Jeffrey Trachtenberg‘s article in today’s Wall Street Journal about David Wroblewski‘s breakout success with his debut novel, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, about the one significant detail missing: Trachtenberg describes the book merely as “a classic coming-of-age tale of a mute boy and his dog set in rural Wisconsin,” when it also happens to be to Hamlet what Jane Smiley‘s A Thousand Acres was to King Lear. And it’s not like Wroblewski bothers to hide his inspiration: Edgar’s mother is named Trudy, and her late husband’s brother is named Claude.

The funny thing is, it’s not even the only debut novel that’s coming out this summer that takes the plot of Hamlet and plops it into the heartland of America. Lin Enger‘s Undiscovered Country (yep, the title comes from the play) is about a seventeen-year-old boy in northern Minnesota who discovers his father’s apparent suicide but starts to wonder whether his uncle, Clay, might have had something to do with it. Apart from the geographical disparities, the two novels have at least one more major difference—Enger’s story is nearly half the length of Wroblewski’s. (Guess he took that “brevity is the soul of wit” advice to heart!)

I’d been meaning to ask around to find out whether these two books were being seen by the same editors during the submissions phase—Wroblewski is repped by Eleanor Jackson; Enger by Devin McIntyre—and how far apart they might’ve been crossing people’s desks, and maybe I’ll find that out later. Today, I’m just wondering if there’s another writer in, say, Montana tinkering with a similar idea who’s going to walk into a bookstore and then look for a wall to bang his forehead against.

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