I'm going to postpone the deleted scene I promised last time, since I wanted to comment on this article in the current issue of Time. The basic premise is that all the efforts around keeping the plot of the last Harry Potter book secret are misguided, because the pleasures of literature are not in the discovering of secrets, that "spoilers" cannot actually spoil a novel.

I think it is true that the experience of literature, or any storytelling, isn't spoiled by knowing how the story will end. I cheerfully reread books all the time, for the pleasure of re-entering the world and spending more time with the characters. In many cases, it's also to learn more about the book (beware of anybody who claims to understand Dhagren, or Ulysses, or Gravity's Rainbow after one reading). I enjoy reading good mysteries even when I already know who did the crime and why and how. (Sometimes I don't remember, of course, but that's a different question). Why would I ever want to stop visiting 221B Baker Street, or the brownstone on West 35th, or the city of Bellona, or Amber, or Dublin on that certain day 103 years ago?

But there is also a particular pleasure in reading something for the first time, not knowing what will happen on the next page. When I read The Green Mile the first time, in six monthly installments, I thoroughly enjoyed that month of trying to figure out why the hell the shoelaces were so important (which I never did figure out). Knowing that answer in advance would not have spoiled the book, but it would have spoiled that specific pleasure.

When people ask what U-town is about (and what "U-town" itself actually is), I try not to reveal very much, since I think that it is best to find yourself here, with Vicki, on the bridge, with no idea where you are or what is happening, and to discover the answers as she does. When Corwin wakes up in the hospital with amnesia at the beginning of Nine Princes in Amber, it's much more fun to learn who he is, and what Amber is, and who the nine princes are, as he does, rather than knowing it all in advance. Though of course, I re-read all the Amber books, and U-town, from time to time, too. But even there, part of the enjoyment is remembering that first reading (or, in the case of U-town, the writing), when I didn't know.

In any case, getting back to Harry Potter, the main purpose of the secrecy is not actually the protection of that "magic moment," it's the building of hype (hence the article I link to above). And it's working, since the article caught my attention, obviously, even though I've never read a single Harry Potter book, or seen any of the movies.

But, after all, if you're really trying to keep a secret, you don't describe your methods in such detail. But that wouldn't get you a 4-page article in Time.

1. I might write another mystery. I even have a rough idea for one. I've always thought it would be good to have more "mysteries" which weren't "murder mysteries," where there's a mystery to solve, but nobody dies.

2. I might create a "newbie" version of the new novel, for folks who haven't read the others, which actually starts with the last few chapters of U-town.

3. If I start that "newbie" version with the "Carly" chapter (which would seem to be a good idea), I could do a real PHP-based version of that chapter, with variable links (links that take you different places, depending on where you came from). That's the way it was originally intended to work, back before I knew about PHP (and probably before PHP existed, now that I think of it).

4. I might customize the coding of the utownwriting blog (where there is a new cutup posted, by the way) to present more of the writing there, starting with some more "deleted" scenes.

5. I might come up with a name for the new novel. Maybe.

Looking over the draft, I’ve realized that there are two types of dangling plot threads.

The first type is accidental (probably the larger category). An example of an accidental one would be Alex’s book. Its imminent publication was the impetus behind Jan revealing certain family history to Vicki here, and behind Sam and Alex visiting Perry here.

But, once those two things happened, the book was never mentioned again. Even if it wasn’t going to come out, there should have been some mention of it, even if only to establish how happy Tammy would have been to see it postponed.

The second type is deliberate. For example, once the intrepid crew sets out on their journey (in the dark), the Jinx are not mentioned again. No mention of Dr. Lee and CJ, or of the Jinx in the stadium, or of the rest of them. This was deliberate (forgetting about one unpublished book would be one thing, to forget nearly three hundred characters would be pretty careless), because I haven’t decided how to resolve that part of the story yet.

Well, I guess there’s a third category of unresolved plot threads, the ones which won’t be resolved at all, at least in this book. There should always be a few of those, as Marshall explains at the end.

(Oh, and there’s another cut-up posted here.)

Hemingway, in his later years, said that he found it very difficult to recall Lady Duff Twysden, though he had known her quite well when he was younger. He said that when he tried to think about her, he ended up remembering Lady Brett Ashley, the character he had based on her in The Sun Also Rises.

My family used to have a summer cottage. We were very fond of it, and we spent a lot of our vacations there when I was growing up. My parents had planned and built it, and everything inside the house, including the plumbing and wiring, was done by members of the family.

It was sold a long time ago, and I’m not nostalgic about it (and I’m not at all curious about what the current owners may have done to the place). The last couple of times I went to the area, I didn’t go look at the house.

Part of it is that it’s ancient history at this point, but mostly it’s because I used it as the model for Perry Nelson’s house, as shown in the conclusion of A Sane Woman, and in the A Visit to Perry chapter of the current novel.

When I think of the house, I see it with Perry and the others in residence, and it takes an effort to remember that it was an actual house, where I actually spent a lot of time.

This is true of some of the characters as well.

There is more of the current chapter up here. We’re very near the end.