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All fan mail is wonderful. A connection, a gift. I’m grateful for every letter I’ve received over the past decades. But sometimes a particular one comes out of the blue and takes my breath away.
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And, oh yeah, I loved this line, “It was interesting, reading a book where the protagonist sucks.”
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Meet Veronica.
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Good evening,
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For my English class, I had to watch a Ted Talk where this guy went around thanking everyone responsible for his coffee. He thanked the barista, he thanked the men who grew the coffee, he thanked the woman who conducted the pest control where the coffee was stored. He wanted to recognize the thousands of people who put in the work to make something as simple as a cup of coffee. His story inspired me to write this email, to thank you for writing the Fall.
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I know that it was written over a decade ago, and that you’ve written much since. But, while at the library, I picked up your book. I read the back cover, which intrigued me, and brought it home.
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It was interesting, reading a book where the protagonist sucks. I don’t see it very often. I’ve heard that writers are encouraged to make their characters likeable and someone the readers would like to relate to. After I learned that Sam had a kind of friendship with Morgan, I almost put the book down. I couldn’t bear to continue. How dare he play such a role in the harassment when he could see what it did.
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At the end, I was in tears. It’s a rare thing. The worst part was that Sam sees his wrongs after it is too late. No matter what he does, who he apologizes to, Morgan will never hear it. It’s heartbreaking. I’m worried I will make the same mistake.
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What I’m trying to say, Mr. Preller, is that your book moved me. It made me feel something. I wanted to read it again. And for that I want to thank you. I thank you for writing, in my opinion, a great book.
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You should be proud of your work.
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Veronica
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I replied . . .
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Veronica,
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My goodness, what a letter.
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What a gift.
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You are a special human being. Not just that you read my book, or even that you felt it, but that in an act of pure kindness, you wrote to say so out of the goodness of your heart. Amazing, really.
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Today I’ll walk around with thoughts of you in my mind, inspired to be a little better, a little more grateful to one and all.
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I’ve mentioned it before on this blog, but the Irish have an expression, “Flowers for the living.” That we don’t have to wait for someone to die before we say something nice about them. I do try to keep that in mind. And now, thanks to you, even moreso.
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Thanks for the flowers.
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As for my unlikeable protagonist, Sam, I wrote from that perspective a few years after writing a book titled, Bystander. In that book, there’s a bully and, weirdly, I found myself feeling sympathy for him. That book is not told from the bully’s perspective. At that time, there was a lot of anti-bullying sentiment out there, appropriately so. But here’s the thing: Bullying is a verb, an act, not a noun. I don’t really believe in “the bully,” strictly speaking. Walt Whitman’s, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” The so-called bully might be a gifted athlete, kind to his grandmother, sweet with animals, a musician, funny and charismatic, etc. But in this one area, he is making some poor decisions. Not to gloss over the very real damage that he might cause. We are each responsible for our actions. But no one should be defined by the worst thing they’ve ever done. –
I wanted that complexity to show in Sam’s character, even though that’s uncomfortable and even confusing at times.
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Have a great summer, and feel free to write again if you wish.
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My best,
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James Preller
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P.S. Check out the Japanese cover!
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This is the beautiful, haunting cover of the Japanese translation of my book, THE FALL. I love it so, so much.
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