Q&A with Corey Sobel

From my Q&A with Corey Sobel, author of The Redshirt:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story? 

That depends on a reader’s familiarity with college football. 

If you know even a little bit about the game, you will know that a “redshirt” is a term used for freshmen who don’t play their first season and thus retain a year of NCAA eligibility. My hope is that this reader—let’s call them Reader A—has their interest piqued because a redshirt freshman, being the lowest of the low of players on scholarship, isn’t an intuitive focus for a novel. We won’t see this player play in games or impact their team’s season in any real way, which is usually the status quo for the heroes of what few literary novels exist about sports. So what will be the focus? Why will this player’s experience warrant an entire book? Maybe this is a long way of saying that, for the football-savvy, the title will signal that this isn’t your usual sports story—which it isn’t. 

My experience so far, though, is that very few of the book’s readers know a single lonesome thing about college football—and that I haven’t heard reports of people setting The Redshirt on fire or using it as a doorstop suggests that this hasn’t been an obstacle to them enjoying it. For this reader—Reader B—the title will be a bit mysterious. Why is it “redshirt,” one word, instead of “red shirt”? Less literally, I would hope that readers’ minds wander to books that contain something similar to a red shirt; what I’ve heard most often is that they are reminded of Nathanael Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. I am over the moon when people tell me this, because that association is very much intended. Hawthorne is one of my favorite writers, and I had his masterpiece in mind when settling on this title. Just as is the case with The Scarlet Letter, my book focuses on the customs of a deeply conservative society and on the stigma that’s affixed to anyone who dares to rebel against those mores. 

My ultimate hope is...[read on]

Visit Corey Sobel's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Redshirt.

Q&A with Corey Sobel.

--Marshal Zeringue