'Little Book' rich product of 3 decades

The publication of Selden Edwards' rich, thoughtful and clever novel, "The Little Book," comes very close to fairy tale.

Edwards, now 67, was formerly an English teacher and headmaster at several private schools around the country. He began writing this book in 1974. It's about a rock star named Wheeler Burden, who surprisingly finds himself in Vienna in 1897.

The story weaves back and forth in time as the author adds other characters, including actual historical ones, such as psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, composer Gustave Mahler and singer Buddy Holly. Loosely, the story is inspired by Kafka's "The Metamorphosis," the story of Gregor Samsa, who wakes up one morning as a bug — with no explanation.

Burden finds himself in a strange land that he has studied in school, wearing odd clothes and having no visible means of support. He has to make friends, find a place to stay and figure out how to make a living. It is a huge challenge.

Edwards refers to it as a "Freudian novel," reflecting his own interest in psychology, mythology and psychotherapy. Edwards now happily refers to himself as "a late bloomer" who worked on one novel for 30 years, then finally saw it published to rave reviews by such famed writers as Richard Ford and Pat Conroy.

"I got my first job teaching English in 1963," recalled Edwards during a phone interview from his home in Santa Barbara, Calif., "and five years later I got the bug for writing. I took the pledge in 1968 and started writing pretty regularly during vacations and free time."

He began with short stories, which he sent to prospective publishers who punctured his dreams by rejecting every one. He sent novel proposals, too, and they were also rejected. While a graduate student in education at Stanford University, he sent out more manuscripts, only to see them all summarily rejected.

"When you get rejected, it makes you feel like a manic-depressive. I would get excited about a manuscript and then when it was rejected I would think it was terrible." But he never gave up the original idea for the novel about Wheeler Burden.

"It was on my mind most of the time," said Edwards. "I considered various characters and plot twists over and over. As life intruded on my work, I put in more ideas based on my own life. I think the novel got deeper and richer as time passed. I got no encouragement at all from anyone."

In 1982, he put the manuscript on a personal computer for the first time, making "a huge difference" in his ability to rewrite. Prior to that, he had typed everything over and over on a small typewriter.