When word first leaked out from the London Book Fair hall that Rivka Galchen‘s debut novel, ATMOSPHERIC DISTURBANCES AND OTHER SAD METEOROLOGICAL PHENOMENA was on submission to editors all over the world, my first thought was “wait a minute, this sounds a whole lot like THE ECHO MAKER.” And sure enough, Publishers Marketplace reported yesterday that Galchen’s novel was pre-empted by Farrar, Straus & Giroux‘s Eric Chinski – who also happens to be the current editor of National Book Award winner Richard Powers. Bill Clegg at William Morris made the deal happen.
First the details, then the word of warning. Galchen graduated from Princeton‘s English department in 1998 (where she studied with Joyce Carol Oates) then got her medical degree from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 2003 with a concentration in psychiatry, and recently obtained her MFA from Columbia. She was one of six recipients of the 2006 Rona Jaffe Prize, giving her enough money to work full-time on the novel, originally pitched as “about a 51-year-old psychiatrist who believes that his wife has been replaced with an exact look-alike” but according to the PM deal writeup, now “about a psychiatrist’s humorous and science-steeped odyssey to find his missing wife, a quest that takes him from New York to Buenos Aires to far-flung Patagonia, in the midst of which he comes to rely upon the help of a patient who believes he’s part of a secret society that controls the weather.” She’s written about doctor workplace issues and updates to the Dewey Decimal System. She’s published in medical journals. She’s volunteered in Peru. She sings and acts in plays. And she’s got an advance blurb from the RULE OF FOUR duo.
Point being, this is one super-smart young writer and person, and it’s both inevitable and sad that Galchen’s book will likely garner the same backlash that greeted Marisha Pessl last summer. Because lord help you if you’re young, female and want to write a – gasp! – novel of ideas that tries to bridge science and literature, lest you be consigned to mere paperback original status* (even if there’s redemption on the way in your native country.) So a small plea: can that sort of hype be pre-empted like Galchen’s book deal was? It would make life so much easier for all parties concerned, you know? Then we could just judge the book for the book’s sake, or is that too revolutionary for these corners…
*Though I hasten to add that in this case, TPO worked almost letter perfectly, but it still would be nice for Thomas to get way more attention than she has.