Literary News

They say the elephant is slow to mate. Slow to gestate too. A pregnant elephant stays pregnant for 22 months.

Charles Frazier, author of the insanely successful "Cold Mountain" (1997), spent almost 10 years pregnant with his second novel, which has now been delivered and is scheduled for publication this October under the title "Thirteen Moons." He sold this new novel as an idea (on the strength of a one-page outline) way back after "Cold Mountain" became a huge best-seller ... for (gulp) $8 million ... without yet having written a page.

According to this a.m.'s NYTimes, "Thirteen Moons" "is the story of a young white man raised by Cherokee Indians who ends up representing them in Washington in their fight to preserve their land." Ain't no Civil War, with vicious out-riders and an epic journey home, but maybe it'll do.

Plus we have a soft spot in our hearts for Charles Frazier in these parts. Many of us remember him well from his days as a student at Appalachian State University, when he was overshadowed as a budding writer by other students who were more aggressive in promoting themselves as belles lettrists. At student readings, Frazier was always working on something that wasn't quite finished. No one much thought of him as the successful writer-to-be. Boy, were we wrong.

The experience of reading "Cold Mountain" back in 1997 lives with me even today, the jewel-like faceting of every blessed sentence, the indelible characters so efficiently drawn, the epic juice of a really (after all) primitive plotline. Plus I finished reading the thing on the very day that Princess Diana was pronounced dead, so there I was with two losses to sort out -- the blond princess who ought to mean nothing to me, but did, and the no-first-name Inman, the Every Man of the 19th Century South, who seemed as real as boiled cabbage. And for that moment, on that day, Charles Frazier seemed to be commanding all the tragedy in the world.

I hope his second novel is as good as the first, though the NYTimes sourly indicates that there's no reason on earth to expect it will be. Charles Frazier has defied expectations before. We're counting on him again.