things found on the Internet when I should be working, #1

Excerpts from G.K. Chesterton’s “Defence of Detective Stories“

In attempting to reach the genuine psychological reason for the popularity of detective stories, it is necessary to rid ourselves of many mere phrases. It is not true, for example, that the populace prefer bad literature to good, and accept detective stories because they are bad literature. . . .  The trouble in this matter is that many people do not realize that there is such a thing as a good detective story; it is to them like speaking of a good devil. To write a story about a burglary is, in their eyes, a sort of spiritual manner of committing it. To persons of somewhat weak sensibility this is natural enough; it must be confessed that many detective stories are as full of sensational crime as one of Shakespeare’s plays.

There is, however, between a good detective story and a bad detective story as much, or, rather more, difference than there is between a good epic and a bad one. Not only is a detective story a perfectly legitimate form of art, but it has certain definite and real advantages as an agent of the public weal.

The first essential value of the detective story lies in this, that it is the earliest and only form of popular literature in which is expressed some sense of the poetry of modern life. Men lived among mighty mountains and eternal forests for ages before they realized that they were poetical; it may reasonably be inferred that some of our descendants may see the chimney-pots as rich a purple as the mountain-peaks, and find the lamp-posts as old and natural as the trees. Of this realization of a great city itself as something wild and obvious the detective story is certainly the ‘Iliad.’ No one can have failed to notice that in these stories the hero or the investigator crosses London with something of the loneliness and liberty of a prince in a tale of elfland, that in the course of that incalculable journey the casual omnibus assumes the primal colours of a fairy ship. The lights of the city begin to glow like innumerable goblin eyes, since they are the guardians of some secret, however crude, which the writer knows and the reader does not. Every twist of the road is like a finger pointing to it; every fantastic skyline of chimney-pots seems wildly and derisively signalling the meaning of the mystery.

This realization of the poetry of London is not a small thing. . . .  There is, however, another good work that is done by detective stories. While it is the constant tendency of the Old Adam to rebel against so universal and automatic a thing as civilization, to preach departure and rebellion, the romance of police activity keeps in some sense before the mind the fact that civilization itself is the most sensational of departures and the most romantic of rebellions. By dealing with the unsleeping sentinels who guard the outposts of society, it tends to remind us that we live in an armed camp, making war with a chaotic world, and that the criminals, the children of chaos, are nothing but the traitors within our gates. When the detective in a police romance stands alone, and somewhat fatuously fearless amid the knives and fists of a thieves’ kitchen, it does certainly serve to make us remember that it is the agent of social justice who is the original and poetic figure, while the burglars and footpads are merely placid old cosmic conservatives, happy in the immemorial respectability of apes and wolves. The romance of the police force is thus the whole romance of man. It is based on the fact that morality is the most dark and daring of conspiracies. It reminds us that the whole noiseless and unnoticeable police management by which we are ruled and protected is only a successful knight-errantry.

(Thanks to Wordle for the tag cloud.)

the Joker’s on us

Yesterday, Jonathan Lethem responded to Andrew Klavan’s bizarre likening of Batman to George Bush – a hero who has to bear the brunt of doing the right thing by means of torture, rendition, and violation of the law.

Lethem found the film’s main take-away message is a kind of “morbid incoherence,” one that marks our current civic discourse, “strained to helplessness by panic, overreaction and cultivated grievance.” And sadly, he sees a parallel with our current exhausted shrug in the face of the latest news, which is not so much “new” as more of the same.

No wonder we crave an entertainment like “The Dark Knight,” where every topic we’re unable to quit not-thinking about is whirled into a cognitively dissonant milkshake of rage, fear and, finally, absolving confusion.

It may be possible to see the nightly news in a similar light, where any risk of uncovering the vulnerable yearnings, all the tenderness aroused by, yes, the seemingly needless death of a promising young actor or of a brilliant colleague, all hope of conversation between the paranoid blues and the paranoid reds, all that might bind us together, is forever armored in a gleeful and cynical cartoon of spin and disinformation. Keywords — “change,” “victory” — are repeated until adapted out of meaning, into self-canceling glyphs. Meanwhile, pigs break into the lipstick store, and we go hollering down the street after them, relieving ourselves of another hour or day or week of clear thought.

Beneath the sniping, so many real things lie in ruins: a corporate paradigm displaying no shred of responsibility, but eager for rescue by taxpayers; a military leadership’s implicit promise to its recruits and their families; a public discourse commodified into channels that feed any given preacher’s resentments to a self-selecting chorus. In these déjà vu battles, the combatants forever escape one another’s final judgment, whirl off into the void, leaving us standing awed in the rubble, uncertain of what we’ve seen, only sure we’re primed for the sequel.

If everything is broken, perhaps it is because for the moment we like it better that way. Unlike some others, I have no theory who Batman is — but the Joker is us.

So here we are again: what does popular culture tell us about our world? In this case, nothing really. The world is broken, and so is our discourse; so are our heroes, and apparently we find some absolving relief in that. For Andrew Klavan, celebrating lawless and brutal vigilantism for the sake of fighting our enemies, burning the village to save it, is the heroic message.

But as I read Lethem’s list of real things that lie in ruins, I swear I hear an echo of Chandler.

The realist in murder writes of a world in which gangsters can rule nations and almost rule cities, in which hotels and apartment houses and celebrated restaurants are owned by men who made their money out of brothels, in which a screen star can be the fingerman for a mob, and the nice man down the hall is a boss of the numbers racket; a world where a judge with a cellar full of bootleg liquor can send a man to jail for having a pint in his pocket, where the mayor of your town may have condoned murder as an instrument of moneymaking, where no man can walk down a dark street in safety because law and order are things we talk about but refrain from practising; a world where you may witness a hold-up in broad daylight and see who did it, but you will fade quickly back into the crowd rather than tell anyone, because the hold-up men may have friends with long guns, or the police may not like your testimony, and in any case the shyster for the defense will be allowed to abuse and vilify you in open court, before a jury of selected morons, without any but the most perfunctory interference from a political judge. . . . it is the world you live in.” (“The Gentle Art of Murder,” The Atlantic December 1944.)

It’s the world you live in, not a fantasy where good and evil duke it out to a draw. It’s the role of good popular culture – good crime fiction, anyway – to think about the real things that lie in ruins, and to give us a good look at them. Down these mean streets we must go; and in our exploration – even through as prosaic an art as crime fiction – there should be a quality of redemption – not just of blissfully numbing confusion, with a sequel in the works.

Such is my faith.

being genre-ous

Declan Burke, whose latest book The Big O is being released right about now in the US (we’re so often the last kids on the block to read the best things coming out of Europe, though at least this time the US publisher didn’t decide to change the title) recently hosted the Carnival of the Criminal Minds at his blog, Crime Always Pays. Rather than provide the usual feast of links – something that’s hard to top after Brian Lindenmuth hosted the Carnival – he raised a serious question.

Do blogs have a particular role to play in fostering thoughtful critical discussion of a genre that has been typically neglected by mainstream media? Can we do better than the handful of short plot recaps that stand for book reviews in a book review market that is contracting daily? Can bloggers bring out the best in the genre? He thinks we can.

I believe heart and soul that crime / mystery fiction needs and deserves the kind of widespread, top-to-bottom critical work that would in turn inspire the writers to strive towards ever-higher standards of work.

The genre has not only been neglected by traditional channels, it’s often reviewed by people who are ignorant of the genre, who are shocked, shocked to find good writing. You know this is the case when a reviewer is gobsmacked by a book that “transcends the genre” because it’s well-constructed, has fully-developed characters, and is well-written – in other words, it’s a good work of crime fiction, like a great many books published in this genre. It’s only if you’re assuming James Patterson represents the genre that it’s being transcended. Dec goes on to say -

here’s the thing – crime / mystery fiction is the most popular genre on the planet, it is inarguably the most relevant and important fiction out there, and that’s why I believe it deserves more . . . It deserves the kind of dynamic, rigorous, extensive and constantly evolving critical work that the interweb is perfectly placed to provide, and it deserves to be critiqued, justified and praised not by the kind of commentator who will suggest that a particular novel has (koff) ‘transcended the genre’, but by those who understand that good crime / mystery fiction is simultaneously scourge and balm, panacea and drug, a fiction for the world we live in that is also its truth.

Wow.

It’s interesting that a number of traditional venues for book criticism are cutting their coverage and trying to make up for it by taking to the web. I’m not sure what that means, other than that they think they can save money on both newsprint and staff. The Monreal Gazette is the latest to shrink their coverage and call it an improvement.

It’s also interesting how defensive people get when a mainstream critic says a book is more than a mystery. Yes, it’s tiresome to hear people who haven’t read much in the genre say something has transcended it – how would you know if you haven’t read much of it? – but Janet Maslin saying Dennis Lehane’s newest book is a big step beyond his crime fiction is not to say his other books are dreck that only idiots would read. She seemed to me to be saying his 700-page epic is ambitious in ways his other books were not. Quite often any perceived critique of the genre is met by bristling anger and assertions that literary fiction is navel-gazing plotless crap that nobody wants to read, anyway. And that’s just as silly as declaring all genre fiction mediocre.

We have the means to celebrate the best in a genre, and we certainly have the motive, as Dec stated it above – it matters to us. Those of us who know the genre best need to give it our best critical shot. I’d say that the critical lens that Dec has turned on Irish crime fiction in his blog posts at The Rap Sheet this week are a fine example.

Or take a look at Material Witness. It’s one of several blogs that, when it comes to traditional book reviewing, easily . . . er, dare I say it? . . . transcend the genre.

Gas City by Loren Estleman

Amazing book – not so much for the plot or the characters as for the whole package. Set in a mythical city, presumably in the Midwestern US, this story involves two major plotlines – the police chief, who has just buried his wife, has decided to buck the system he’s supported for years and actually enforce the law, even in “the circle,” the part of town ruled by criminals. And someone is butchering women and leaving their parts in garbage bags around the city. Both of these plotlines intersect in a hotel detective and erstwhile alcoholic pimp, who comes out of his haze when he has a chance to do some real detecting.

Estleman has always had a yen for the past (in books like Retro) but here the world of Gas City is hermetically sealed, a world unto itself, where people occasionally use phrases that are from the 1930s and yet the police chief has a son who died years ago in Vietnam. Though it’s somewhat disorienting, it’s a richly detailed, internally consistent, and lavishly described fictional universe, full of lyrical passages and sometimes hilarious throwaway lines.

This is one of those books you have to give yourself to. Adapt to its pace, savor the lines, and don’t worry about what time it is.

by the time you’ve read these . . .

. . . you’ll have gone right around the world.

LibraryThing is having another book pile contest. I decided to join in this time – with a few books I’ve been picking up that are from different parts of the world. Here’s my entry:

In ascending order, there’s crime fiction from Sweden, Palestine, Slovakia, Turkey, Brazil, Botswana, Russia, South Africa, Australia, Iceland, Scotland, and Canada – with a non-fiction book about China, thrown in for good measure. (We’re reading John Pomfret’s Chinese Lessons as a college common reading this year.)

By the way, LibraryThing is fun – and it’s where I keep track of what I’ve been reading, which is handy when you have a terrible memory.

the holy trinity

Karen Chisolm has tagged me with a meme that started over at David Montgomery’s Crime Fiction Dossier: who are the three authors you couldn’t live without?

A few years ago, I might actually have duplicated his answer – Lawrence Block, John Connelly, and George Pelecanos. Or maybe it would have been John Harvey, Reginald Hill, and Dennis Lehane. Or Elmore Leonard, Robert Crais and James Lee Burke . . . Okay, you get the picture. It wasn’t hard at all to name my favorites. I had a fairly short list.

Now I have a very long list. And an even longer list of authors I want to try, but haven’t yet. (Damn you, 4MA! I’ll read until I die and I still won’t be finished!!) Another thing that has happened is that some of my favorites ten years ago are still writing, but either I’ve changed or they have. They just don’t have the pizazz for me they once had.

So I think I’ll divide this into two parts: authors who made me the reader I am today and authors whose work really excites me right now. And then the Meme graders can give me an F for not following directions.

Three authors who made me the reader I am today – Dennis Lehane, who showed me you could write beautifully about terrible things. Elmore Leonard, who loves all of his characters, even the lame, the halt, and the uncool, and who has a laconic but utterly generous approach to the world. And John Harvey, whose writing has a very special quality of light.

Three authors whose work excites me right now – Jo Nesbo, who is simply brilliant and makes me believe in his world. David Corbett, who takes risks and is insightful about what’s going on. And Denise Mina, who had me with GarnethIll, but keeps surprising me with her range.

Of course that’s three authors among some 3,000 that I could name . . .

photo courtesy of Your Guide.

The Smorgasbord Gets Bigger

I’m struggling to pare my reading list for next fall’s first term seminar course on international crime fiction from 1,000,000,000,000 books to just a half dozen or so. Meanwhile, this welcome news in Library Journal’s annual roundup of the genre.

Crime in translation and foreign mysteries continue to wash up on our shores. In June, the Milan-based publisher Baldini Castoldi Editore enters the U.S. market for the first time with Giorgio Faletti’s I Kill, a psychological thriller set in Monte Carlo—a huge best seller in Italy. Also passing through customs is the first Arabic detective novel published in English. Set in Casablanca, The Final Bet (American Univ. in Cairo Pr., May) by Abdelilah Hamdouchi is the dark tale of a handsome young Moroccan accused of killing his much older wife.

The Scandinavian crime wave features Johan Theorin’s Echoes of the Dead, winner of Sweden’s Best First Crime Novel (Delacorte, Dec. 2008). Other exotic settings to be highlighted include Taiwan (Francie Lin’s The Foreigner, Picador, Jun.), Slovakia (Michael Genelin’s Siren of the Waters, Soho Crime, Jul.), and Mongolia (Michael Walters’s The Shadow Walker, Berkley Prime Crime, Aug.).

The British invasion this summer and fall has a strong Scottish flavor, with two novels set in the Shetland Islands, Anne [sic] Ann Cleeves’s White Nights (Minotaur, Sept.) and S.J. Bolton’s debut, Sacrifice (Minotaur, May). St. Martin’s Minotaur executive editor Kelley Ragland describes Sacrifice as “a totally gripping read with an atmospheric setting and a modern-day story inspired by an ancient legend.”

Set in Aberdeen is award-winning Stuart MacBride’s fourth DS Logan McRae procedural, Flesh House (Minotaur, Oct.). “This might possibly be his most violent book, but he’s just so good and slightly ignored in the States,” raves Macmillan library marketing director Talia Ross. And September marks the arrival of Ian Rankin’s highly anticipated final John Rebus mystery, Exit Music (Little, Brown).

I’m so pleased US publishers have discovered that Americans are willing and eager to read about the rest of the world.

seriously . . .

There’s a good piece by Charles McGrath in today’s Times about genre fiction and quality. The call out quote – “Today’s novelists feel as if they have to choose either pedestal or plot.”

Referring to the Brady Affair, he says . . .

Thrillers by and large do much better than literary novels, and though the title “Bleedout” turns out to refer, disappointingly, to kosher butchery rather than human carnage, it has done pretty well, selling some 50,000 copies in Britain alone since it came out in 2005. An author seeking damages would do better, one would have thought, by claiming to have become so addled that she had decided to forsake a certain payday for the vain hope of literary success. In that case the Times headline might read: “Fumes Float Author’s Fantasy.”

And on the Banville doppelganger:

Both Ian Rankin, the British mystery writer, and Stephen King, the horror-meister, have complained about a double standard — a conspiracy, in effect — among critics and reviewers that tends to ghettoize genre writing and prevent its practitioners from being taken seriously.

But if there is a conspiracy it’s one that authors — highbrow authors, anyway — are sometimes complicit in, frequently adopting pseudonyms when they want to dabble in, say, crime writing. The most curious case recently is that of John Banville, the Booker Prize winner who has published two highly regarded mysteries under the name Benjamin Black but hasn’t taken any pains to keep his true identity a secret. For a Web site, he has even interviewed his alter ego. Perhaps not so surprising is that what makes the two Black novels, “Christine Falls” and “The Silver Swan,” so good — their atmospheric descriptive writing — is precisely Mr. Banville’s great strength, while Benjamin Black, whose third novel is currently being serialized in The New York Times Magazine, is still learning some of the ropes when it comes to plot and suspense.

a load of old cobblers!

CORRECTION: the load of cobblers, according to the author involved, was hauled by a writer at The Times (London) who invented the fumes-make-you-lowbrow idea. According to Joan Brady:

“That’s the pure invention of the Times. They have decided that this effete literary woman has become so stupid that she can no longer write boring literary fiction and writes poorly selling thrillers instead. My mental faculties haven’t deteriorated. And anyway, what an insult it would be to thriller writers to suggest that you need to be stupid to write them. It seems to me so irritating that you would denigrate a remarkable genre where much of the best writing is done. I’m a great admirer of writers like John Grisham and Scott Turow.”

Now, when we were last here…

There’s an excellent essay in The Guardian by Mark Lawson riffing on the peculiar case of a writer who won a largish settlement when she claimed fumes from a neighboring shoe factory caused her to write crime fiction instead of serious literature. (I’d already seen this News of the Weird at Sarah Wienman’s blog – apparently the injured party is writing a sequel to the book that was entered in evidence of her degraded ability to concentrate; ah dear, she’s a the glue again.) Lawson makes the case that the distinctions between genres are specious – which, to my mind, is a more convincing argument than “crime fiction is way better than snobby littrachure, and it’s more popular, too, nanner nanner nanner.”

So, in the course of a compensation dispute, we have medical and legal support for the traditional libel against crime writing: that it is done by authors whose brains aren’t fully working. Perhaps, in the way that the dim in showbusiness became known as airheads, leading crime and thriller writers should in future be designated fumeheads.

And yet this is a strange time for the claim to be made, because the boundaries between the two sides of fiction – which we can loosely call literary and populist, although all of the terminology used in these debates tends to be pejorative – is visibly breaking down. . . .

So the reason for the survival of these prejudices can only be that whenever populist fiction makes an attempt to drag itself through the doors of the academy, it’s held back by the dead, reeking weight of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code manacled to the ankles. But it makes no sense to discredit the best of a genre by invoking the worst: no television reviewer argues that Newsnight is rubbish simply because America’s Next Top Model stinks.

The comments that follow are great fun, too.

Asa Larsson, Sun Storm

A stunning book, beautifully written, that takes us from Stockholm, where Rebecka Martinsson works long hours in a soulless law office on tax cases, to Kiruna in the arctic north, where a man Rebecka once knew has been murdered ritualistically in a church. His sister, a childhood friend of Rebecka’s, is the prime suspect. The massive church, built to house a revivalist, fundamentalist sect called The Source of All Our Strength, has three shifty pastors who aren’t cooperating with the investigation. Rebecka, who takes on the defense, finds herself allied with a very pregnant police detective, because both of them want to find the truth. The book has wonderful characters, a twisty plot, and a tremendous sense of place. I was particularly pleased that the cultishness of the religion wasn’t overemphasized; the role of the mega-church in the life of the community sheds an interesting light on religion in Swedish society. Though the ending was a bit over the top, it’s all in all a fairly breathtaking performance – presented in a lucid, elegant translation. I’ll certainly be reading more by this author.