Literary checkmate: the overwhelming response to first-time novelist Stephen Carter has the publishing world calling it the next Bonfire of the Vanities.

In a very real sense Stephen L. Carter has known the Gar lands for much of his life. Now the rest of us can finally enter their world with the publication of his first novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park. More than likely, it won't be the last we hear of them.

Carter--that Yale law professor known for provocative, academic nonfiction--says he began forming the characters that populate the novel as long as 20 years ago, shaping many stories to fit them before settling on the plot.

"This novel is the product of a lot of false starts," says Carter. "I think it's fair to say that I had the characters long before I had the story. The story was generated as a vehicle for the characters. I had the characters first, and that is very important because the characters led me through lots of visions of fiction."

The Emperor of Ocean Park revolves around a black conservative jurist and patriarch referred to most often, even by his children and even in death, as "the Judge."

"Even today, well over a decade after the Judge's fall," Carter writes, "I am buttonholed by students who want to hear from my own mouth that my who father is indeed they have heard he is, and by colleagues who want me to explain to them how it felt to sit there day after miserable day, listening stoically as the Senate methodically destroyed him."

Though the characters are entirely fictional, and, Carter insists, based on no individuals in particular, readers--especially those familiar with middle- and upper-class black society--will probably recognize themselves or people they know.

The novel's charms--mystery, ambition, romance, family and chess--however, are universal ones that the author and publisher hope will extend far beyond the African-American book market. Add richly evocative writing and fully realized, non-stereotyped characters, and there is reason to expect critical and commercial acclaim. The fictional Garlands mostly divide their time among the power centers of Washington, D.C., including its Gold Coast, the intellectual ether of an Ivy-laced law school community, and the tidy black social elite of Martha's Vineyard.

Alfred A. Knopf and Vintage Books, both imprints of the Knopf Publishing Group (part of Random House), acquired The Emperor of Ocean Park, and a second novel to come for $4 million in an auction among 12 publishers, one of the most hotly contested in publishing history. The advance is said to be one of the highest on record for a first novel, and the publisher expects it to be well worth it. At the same time, John Wells and Warner Brothers bought the film rights in a seven-figure deal that was brokered by Carter's agent, Lynn Nesbit, who represented him in both negotiations.

In announcing the deal in February 2001, Sonny Mehta, the president of Knopf, called the book "the most original piece of fiction I have read in a long time" and Carter has said he chose the publisher because of Mehta's early encouragement of his draft.

"So many people internally here [at Knopf], and so many booksellers that we have been talking to are so excited about this book. There is a level of excitement here that is so amazing and high," says Robin Desser, Carter's editor at Knopf.

"It's a unique combination of a book with a compelling plot and characters who are so well-drawn and so complex and interesting--something where you just keep turning the pages, because it of the elements of suspense, but it also has all of the literary aspects of the best literature," says Desser, who has also edited Gloria Naylor, Rita Dove and Edwidge Danticat. "The fact that these are African-American characters inhabiting the world that they inhabit gives this book so much of its energy, its political intelligence, its aspects of power--all of that," she adds. "I don't know whether there have been many books like this, but I don't think so."

In June, Knopf releases the hardcover in the United States, and Vintage Books is expected to roll out the trade paperback next year. No timetable has been established yet for the second novel, but Carter says he expects to hand in the first draft before he begins promoting The Emperor.

Initially, the tour begins in late May in London, where the book is being released simultaneously, a week before the novel's U.S. debut. Carter will tour heavily in the United States through June and later into the summer. Editors at Knopf would not say how much they plan to spend on publicity for the book, but they were preparing heavy promotional campaigns for a general audience and special promotions in African-American stores and media.

Gabrielle Brooks, Knopf's director of promotions, says the publisher is mailing a chess piece--a critical part of the story line--and the book's prologue to African-American booksellers, followed by an advanced readers' edition mailing. "All this in the hopes that people would have a chance to read the book early and get as excited about it as we are, and also recommend it to their customers and book clubs," Brooks adds.

Carter is already booked for appearances at several African-American bookstores, including Marcus Books in Oakland, California, and Karibu Books in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C.

"Of course, I would love to have wide readership," says Carter. "If a lot of black people read it, that's great. If a lot of people who aren't black read it, then so much the better," he says.

"Obviously, the main characters and settings are drawn from a particular slice of what my character Misha Garland calls `the darker nation.' My hope is that, nevertheless, the characters will have a universal aspect, and they will appeal to people who don't happen to have had these experiences, who don't happen to come from this background."

Though he takes pride in all of his nonfiction, Carter says he has been both "humbled and astonished" by the reaction to his first novel. "I thought I would have to beg someone to publish it," he discloses.

Going from nonfiction to fiction

If you know Stephen Carter's reputation, it is as a writer of serious nonfiction based in the law, some of it for the more general reader, but mostly not. In all, he has written seven critically acclaimed nonfiction books in nine years.

Carter, who graduated from Stanford University and earned a law degree from Yale, is currently the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale, where he has taught since 1982. He was a law clerk for Judge Spottswood W. Robinson III of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

His previous writings also include Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby (1991) The Culture of Disbelief (1993), The Confirmation Mess (1994), Integrity (1996), The Dissent of the Governed (1998), Civility (1998) and God's Name in Vain (2000). However, it was Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby--in which he wrote about how the policies and politics of that era had been both helpful and a hindrance--that attracted a lot of controversy and publicity at the time, and established him as a thinker to be taken seriously. But making the transition to fiction has not been without its difficulties.

"For me, at least, it's an act of much greater vulnerability to publish fiction than nonfiction," Carter admits. "While I have always wanted to write fiction, I am still at a point in my life where my true comfort level is with nonfiction," he says. "I think it's because I like to be defended, I like to be protected--by the footnotes, by those sources, by having something to point to" he continues. "Now if the reader doesn't like it, the buck stops with me."

For his first novel, the author says the story came to him "in an interesting sequence. I think it would be fair to say, for example, that the character who came to me first was the Judge--who although he is deceased in the novel--is the person around whom the story, in some sense, evolves" says Carter. "The other members kind of suggested themselves by [my] contemplating his character."

The Judge is Oliver Garland, who dies in the opening act. He is the black conservative who once received a nomination to the Supreme Court, but was forced to withdraw under the weight of a murky scandal aired in confirmation hearings. Some have asked whether he is Clarence Thomas in disguise, but Carter maintains that he invented Garland long before he was aware of Thomas or his rise to the Court.

Talcott, also known as Misha, is the Judge's younger son, an Ivy League law professor who narrates the novel. He inherits a mystery and the Victorian house in Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard upon his father's untimely death.

Talcott's wife, Kimmer or Kimberly, is a brilliant, ambitious and complex woman who is a candidate for a judgeship herself. Talcott's sister, Mariah--a former journalist and mother--is convinced early on that the Judge's death was not from natural causes. She inherits the D.C. house where the Judge lived as a widower.

Another character, Jack Ziegler, also known as Uncle Jack, is a secretive and peculiar man of ill repute who is the godfather of one of the Garland children, a former business associate of the Judge and a probable contributor to his downfall. "The family bestowed upon these white friends of my father honorary titles when they became godparents ..." writes Carter.

Among the other characters in The Emperor are Misha's son, an older brother, a dead sister, Mariah's husband and their huge family, FBI agents--both impostors and real, the "numberless cousins" and powerful Washington associates, as well as the law school students and colleagues that round out the roster of personalities running through this story.

Creating character-driven fiction

I will admit that as a reader I admire character, more than I admire plot, says Carter. "I try to write fiction that is character-driven, not plot-driven, and I so love people who can write characters in fiction and give us complex characters who--whatever ethnicity they may have in their complexity--give us a lot of things that are universal," he observes.

"Many of the main characters are people from a particular kind of upper middle- class slice of African America that most white people are not aware of, and that many black people are not aware of either," says Carter. "But I am not trying to make it a consciousness-raising novel. Although I would claim that this group's experience is as authentic an African-American experience as the experience of any other particular subgroup in our `darker nation'" he asserts.

"And it's an experience that we don't think about, or talk about or write about that much. Apart from Dorothy West [The Wedding], the fiction that some really wonderful black authors write tends not to be about this particular slice. Then, of course, the few black characters who find their way into novels written by white people also tend not to be from this particular slice of black America."

Chess also figures heavily in the book. Although Carter has enjoyed the game most of his life, he says he is not a great player and took extra care to consult experts for accuracy about a particular chess problem.

What is, perhaps, most remarkable about Carter is that he has managed to complete this lengthy novel--more than 650 pages--at all. His fiction writing has to fit into his life as a professor, scholarly author, husband and parent. He tries to be scrupulous about writing fiction away from his Yale office, and reserving as much time as possible at home for his family, although he manages to mix in a bit of both. He admits his wife, Enola Aird, read many drafts and credits her input for helping make his female characters seem especially realistic, intelligent and well-expressed. However, he's rather emphatic that she is not like Kimmer, Talcott's wife, in The Emperor of Ocean Park

"I hate it when my writing takes me away from my family, so I try to do a lot of writing when no one is home but me," he says. "Or I do a lot of writing at night when everybody has gone to bed."

A daily writing routine

Carter's writing schedule is a disciplined one, fueled by long walks to process his thoughts, chess to relax and a dally commitment to work. "I try to get a little writing done everyday," he says. "I try very hard to do that. I think it is a very important discipline. I don't always manage to get some done every day. Over the years, I have read a lot of essays written by writers about writing, and one of the things productive writers always emphasize is the importance of writing everyday--whether you feel like writing or not."

"A writer is someone who writes," says Carter. "You have to make yourself write. And if you wait until the mood strikes, you will never get it done, because there is every reason in the world to put everything else in front of it."

Both he and his editor are vague about whether the second novel will be a true sequel. Although it's likely that some of the same characters will reappear, Carter prefers not to say whether Misha will continue to narrate. He says, at first he found it difficult to sustain Misha's voice for The Emperor of Ocean Park because it was so unlike his own. Eventually though, he got into the rhythm. But while he himself is more certain about life, says Carter, Misha Garland is more pondering.

As for comparisons to other novels, Carter and his editors prefer to leave that to readers and critics. However, Knopf editor Robin Desser likened The Emperor to Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities.

"I did think of Bonfire of the Vanities--in how that book seemed to be so of the pulse of our emotional and political moment," says Desser. "And now this book, with its African-American protagonist seems just like that to me--only from this other point of view that gives it its excitement," she adds. "It's the big social canvas and really taking the pulse of America and getting all the details and all of the speech and the dialogue, of all the interactions so right and fearlessly so," she adds. "I don't really like to compare it to anything because I have never really read anything like it."

Comparisons notwithstanding, Carter says he was not trying to write a novel like anything else. "All I can say is that I tried to write the best story I could with the characters and ideas that I had," he explains. "I don't have a large message to deliver. If people think they learned something from the novel, or it provokes them to thought, then so much the better," he says, modestly. "I don't have an agenda. There's no politics I was trying to press--no larger claim I make. I was just trying to write a good story."

Angela Dodson is an editor and writer living in New Jersey. She is a contributing editor of BIBR. Her article about Stephen Carter's first novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park, appears on page 46.