The Paradox of Publishing a Good Book

MANGO TREE: THE ARTISTRY AND ALCHEMY OF WRITING. By Carey C. Newman. Chester Heights, PA: Friendship Press, Inc., 2023. Pp. 124. Hardcover, US$ 29.00. Scholars struggle when we write. We want to achieve fluid prose in our argumentation, and we ask ourselves: Is this the right word, the most apropos turn of phrase, the most cohesive line of argumentation, the right tone? We also struggle with various intensities of imposter syndrome. A nagging inner voice worries: Did I forget to cite someone really important on this issue? Does this way of putting the problem make me sound stupid? Finally, we torture ourselves by asking, Will my book make a difference? The question about making a difference—that’s the “So what?” issue. Writers across the spectrum in religious studies want to make a difference, not just in their contribution to scholarship but in the world. These are two very different sets of concerns—the craft of academic writing and the desire for relevance. I’d like to speak to how Mango Tree sees both as intimately related. Good scholarly writing speaks to the world. But Mango Tree surprises in its claims about how to write a world-changing book. All writers need help. Helping writers is the meat and potatoes of what good editors offer to the writers they work with. Superlative editors do more. They find ways to keep writers focused, hungry, and productive. Superlative editors empower their writers to take risks, to dig deeper, to dare to “roam in the land over the fence,” as Carey Newman writes, using a favorite metaphor (13). If you think that daring to take risks is the proverbial icing on the writer’s cake, you would be mistaken. It is an easy mistake for scholars to make. We all know what it feels like to write under pressure, since so much in an academic career depends on getting that book written and in print. We have all been there. Publishing can be terrifying for the assistant professor, or the adjunct hoping to get their contract renewed, or the new PhD hoping to land that dream teaching job, any teaching job. Really good writing is something harried academics just don’t have the time or the energy for. Carey Newman is one of the few voices in the wilderness who believes that now is always the time to “awaken the inner poet” (30). He brings years—decades—of experience helping writers do so. Now, with the publication of Mango Tree, everyone can understand what he is on about. Mango Tree is about the craft of writing, with a trove of practical advice and insights, from paragraph structure to the mysteries of publishing houses. That is the book’s day job. At night and on weekends, however, the book engages in what it really wants to do: Mango Tree wants to awaken, or reawaken, the passion for ideas inked on the page. Mango Tree helps writers produce not just a scholarly book but also entices writers to awaken their inner poet in the process. This kind of awakening may not come easy. Trying to hone one’s craft as a writer while also forging one’s way through the jungle of writing for academe is complicated. I share here some of how the ideas of Mango Tree have both expanded and complicated my understanding of academic writing. Full disclosure: I have worked with Carey now on two theological monographs (Kamitsuka 2023; Kamitsuka 2024). The first book I worked on with Carey, I sent to him as a fully written manuscript. I thought it was in pretty good shape. This was not, after all, my first rodeo. I thought my argument was logical, the rhetoric was appropriately polemical, and my scholarly sources were all lined up. The manuscript, I thought, was ready to move directly to copy editing and production. There were many aspects of the manuscript that needed recrafting, but I want to talk about one element, which actually comprises the chapter of Mango Tree titled “Paragraph.” I thought I knew what a paragraph was and how to construct grammatical and correctly punctuated sentences to populate a paragraph. I thought of the paragraph as the frame to hold the interesting and cleverly painted canvas of knowledge-laden sentences. I thought of the paragraph as the stage on which sentences, with their well-chosen quotes, paraded like so many divas. Paragraphs—as frames or stages. Wrong metaphors! Wrong notion of what a paragraph is. First, one has to put sentences in their place. A sentence, Mango Tree says, “is the spoiled child of writing” that “demands and claims credit” (29). The secret truth of good writing, Mango Tree tells us, is that “writing turns on the paragraph—not the sentence” (29). The paragraph takes self-indulgent, pouty, and petulant sentences and makes them work together to unfold into a whole, a “concord” (30). Each whole paragraph then reveals its lack, its sense of being untethered, its desire to be untethered. The paragraph goes in search of—not the next sentence—the next paragraph. And the next and the next. Book chapters are a phalanx of paragraphs that “manufacture an abundance of lack” (31). Each paragraph feels the lack and searches for the plenitude of meaning, just out of reach. Well-written books are always hungry. Because, as Newman writes, well-written paragraphs are “on the move, always navigating, never at home” (32). It took me drafts and drafts for this point to finally click in my head. Once I finally understood the ethos of the paragraph, my prose changed. I stopped writing sentences as if the truth of the universe, and all the caveats thereto, had to be contained in each sentence. Sentences became shorter. No more divas. Sentences began to stand their ground, not arrogantly but in a straightforward way. Passive verbs and especially the verb “to be” disappeared almost completely. Adverbs disappeared, replaced by active verbs. Like a painter who has to resist mixing too many colors in one brushstroke, I stopped mixing my metaphors (except, however, in my opening remarks here, where I mixed the metaphors of icing on the cake and meat and potatoes—but at least they were both culinary). A second piece of good writing advice has to do with how to break new ground in a scholarly book. Writers often approach this task with ideas of building a house and following a blueprint. One might think in terms of a construction site. One begins with clearing the site. Meaning, one carefully explicates everything that all the famous scholars before you have said on the subject. Then, after burning down that house, one begins one’s own construction project. A book’s plot is like building a house. First the foundation, then the frame, then the plumbing, then the walls, and so on. The Table of Contents will reflect the book’s architectural plan. Wrong metaphor! Books are not construction sites. Mango Tree pleads for us not to think of ideas as static artifacts. Ideas have minds of their own. Good writing will respect that. Mango Tree instructs us that “ideas are people too” (41). In other words, focus on your book’s ideas. Carey Newman has urged me to think of a book as a dinner table around which one’s invited guests all eat, drink, and converse with each other. But the guests are not Scholar Smith and Professor Jones. The guests are the book’s ideas. When sitting down to write a book, one must follow a guiding idea, or a set of ideas. And then one has to give those ideas space to move and change. “Ideas evoke their own recital. Ideas whisper their own arrangement” (42). Ideas surprise—or should. Ideas slay dragons. Ideas solve mysteries ... paint, sing, dance ... Ideas disrupt, tear down, re-make ... Ideas live for tomorrow—and as if there’s no tomorrow ... Ideas tiresome when tame ... Ideas excite when prodigal. Wild, uncontrollable, feral (41). With Mango Tree in hand, I’ve tried to pay more attention to the role of the paragraph and to give more respect to my book’s dinner party of ideas. But questions still linger. As I sit down to write, I’m still restless. I realize I’m grumpy. Dissatisfied. I’m a feminist theologian, so dissatisfaction (dare I say righteous anger) is always brewing beneath the surface. There is no avoiding this situation, nor would I want to. All is not right with the world, and I’d like to use my expertise to speak to that situation. There’s a paradox here—not just for feminist theologians but for many scholars for whom cultural critique is part of their methodology, or for whom ethical concerns are important, or who want to deepen their understanding of what it means to be human. Writers have a desire to launch a book into the world in order to have a positive impact. And this is precisely where writers encounter a paradox. On the one hand, writing comes to an end, and the book is launched with fanfare. The book begins its public journey—what Newman speaks of as its “assertive, public, cultural ritual of show and tell” (26). The book: a glowing debutant. The book: a bell-ringing IPO. The book believes in its own plenitude. Mango Tree tells us that “a book ultimately makes peace with itself” (72). The book at peace feels optimistic and upbeat. Mango Tree describes this moment as the book discovering its own “spine” and giving a “faithful telling of the truth it knows” (74). So why am I still so grumpy? I’m wondering whether, in having adequately followed the instructions in Mango Tree, I have succeeded in writing a fairly good theological book. And that’s the problem. Having pulled together a book-length assortment of well-crafted paragraphs with (hopefully) incisive critiques and compelling ideas, I have fallen under the thrall of my own book. Mango Tree tells us that “if a book is anything, it is a sustained and thoughtful attempt to invent a better day” (74). Well, maybe my book has converted me to an attitude of permanent grumpiness, because I now see even more clearly what needs to change in the world. The book succeeded, and now I am a discontented reader of my own book. I have morphed from the authoritative writer to one of the hoi polloi of readers, whom Newman wickedly describes as “glorious, persnickety, fussy” (35). Meanwhile, my book is off doing its own thing, building its own audience. An innovative, if also controversial, proposal in Mango Tree is the distinction Newman draws between audience and reader. He tells us: “the book may be for readers, but it’s to an audience” (34). I might address my readers in the book I write, either calling out to them directly (Dear Reader) or cozying up to them with that devious little pronoun “we.” However, Newman insists, “the book writes to itself, not to readers” (34). The book performs to the audience it creates and recreates again and again. This is the mysterious truth of timeless books. A book’s timelessness is not the strength of the authorial I (or we) or the enthusiasm of its gaggle of fickle readers. Writers who believe that they strengthen their argument the more they insert their earnest “personal voice” (34) will end up missing the impact their own book is trying to make. The book does not care about my authorship or how much some reader highlights their favorite passages. The book does not care about my “I.” The book is well aware of my political leanings, my ethical or pastoral concerns, and my desires to say something important. However, the finished book has cultivated its own voice and seeks its own audience within its own pages. Sigh. My book does not care about me anymore. Now I am grumpy and sad. As you can see, my writer’s narcissism is on full display. It’s all about me! My book, however, is having none of that. Good books do not serve authorial narcissism but, rather, school their writers to respect the book’s voice. For theological writing, especially, this respect is paramount. Theology, by definition, is logos about theos. We speak of the things of God, which means every theology book eventually bumps up against the wall of apophaticism. There comes a time when the theologian is reduced to silence. But the book—the book can still raise its voice. Its words, as Newman writes, may, by God’s grace, “become a word—even the Word” (34). No writer can or should claim that incarnational honorific. Christian theology proclaims a singular incarnation. The Word, the Logos, John’s gospel tells us, became a human person “full of grace and truth” (1:14). The theologian desires to produce a text that is worthy of that “scandalous particularity” (76). The honest theologian also knows that the further one probes into the meaning of God-With-Us, the less one finds adequate words to articulate its meaning. We theologians keep hunting for the most apt concept: kenosis, theosis, liberation, perichoresis, agape, the feeling of absolute dependence, infinite resignation, survival in the wilderness. I could go on and on. Good writing about theological concepts holds the possibility of taking us far into the ineffable. That is my hope and my theological hubris. However, eventually, theology has to speak about what it does not know and cannot adequately say. The authorial “I” will always be inadequate to the task. It will always be unworthy to untie the sandal strap of God’s grace and truth. However, the possibility that some book I write might—might—speak beyond my theological loss of words is comforting. It gives me hope. I am still a bit grumpy and sad, but also, now, hopeful. A paradox of sorts. But a paradox that might enable me to continue writing. Maybe another book, with another voice that reaches out into the vast space of human meaning-making, which is the space into which God condescended to dwell. I’ve talked about Mango Tree’s vision of good writing. I’ve confessed my grumpiness, my sadness, and my glimmer of theological hope. No doubt, the hopefulness will ease my sadness. My grumpiness, I fear, will never go away. We writers are a grumpy lot. We so often whine. We want to be let in on the secret of good writing. We suspect that our editors know it, but they are strategically withholding that secret to keep us hungry. And maybe that strategy is working. Still, we whine. At least show us what good writing looks like. Give us an example. Well, there is a fairly easy way to meet that demand. Open Mango Tree. Read the “Preface” (xvii-xix). Here, Newman displays the gravity of thick description, the captivating arc of emplotment, and how deliciously sensual a lively turn of phrase can be. Mango Tree does place in our hands a noetic secret: no matter the topic or genre, all serious writing, even the most erudite, is an alchemy of poetry. That kind of writing shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overtake it

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