Owen King, who had to change the name of his book because another author got to it first, considers some of the best and worst titles out there:
The abandoned titles of some celebrated novels are, retrospectively, not merely inconceivable, but inconceivably awful. It is incomprehensible that either The High-Bouncing Lover (The Great Gatsby) or A Failed Entertainment (Infinite Jest) could ever have been seriously considered. Though these examples don’t deserve too much attention except as permanent, soothing exhibits on display in The Museum of the Relativity of Genius, to point out the obvious: the former sounds like a romance novel condemned to eternity in the ten-cent box at the local library sale, and the latter like a warning one would be wise to heed.
In other cases, however, it can be difficult to separate our long-held first impression of a title with a forebear that we learn about later. Dickens’s original working title for Little Dorrit was the entirely acceptable and arguably superior Nobody’s Fault. While I prefer the mirroring double consonants of Little Dorrit and the anchoring of the book to the character that is the swivel for most of the action, I can’t discount the appeal of Nobody’s Fault. This title gestures bitterly toward the novel’s many festering injustices, from the debtor prison system to the feckless “Circumlocution Office.” Nobody’s Fault stings with a single, sharp point, while Little Dorrit expands to touch upon the entire plot. If the title had been different, one would have to read the book somewhat differently.
The Dish 