ANOTHER MYSTERY, HALF READ

I've been trying to read Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, by Tom Franklin, a mystery novel nominated for an award in the annual L.A. Times Book Festival, coming up at USC at the end of April.  

The book was one of five finalists, so I thought I'd take a look. I am always trying to find a good literary thriller, a novel that combines crime and violence with real fiction, an attempt at discovery of the self, a book about crime and violence that offers insight into human nature rather than simply escape.

Good friggin' luck.

I quit on Page 42, in the middle of a back-story chapter. Some of the writing is very good. In the first chapter, I only found two lines I wanted to scratch out. Of course I didn’t, since it is a library book.

I guess this book’s appeal is based on its exotic details: a body rotting in a swamp, found by the buzzards in the sky; a weird geeky guy who everyone thought murdered a missing girl years ago; the killing of that geeky guy; a love affair between a deputy constable and an EMT (paramedic); another missing girl.

That all sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? I wish it was.

Ultimately, who cares? The back-story slowed it down, and I couldn’t finish it. It just didn’t hold my interest. I was doing OK until the back-story, which just got way too dull. But I saw no hints that the author was after any kind of truth.

I don't understand why these writers hunt such small game. Why shoot rabbits when you could shoot lions? (Metaphorically speaking, of course.)

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES

I don't really mind crappy escapist fiction, a good beach read or airplane book. What I do mind is the lack of imagination and originality in these novels.

And I mind the low level of quality in so-called literary or mainstream fiction. I'm thinking of books by John Banville, Adam Ross, Jess Walter, Jonathan Franzen, John Wray and other respected, so-called literary novelists.

God damn, their stuff is disappointing, to me at least. Sorry to have to say it, but it's mostly crap, what I have seen of it. I even have problems with the works of my acquaintance Michael Chabon, who seemed like a nice enough young guy when I met him once. He's a wonderful technician, full of brilliance, line by line, but he wouldn't know a complete story if it bit him on the butt. (Sorry, Michael.)

The great literary critic Harold Bloom posits several criteria for good literature in his book "The Western Canon." One criterion is originality. He says when you read a great work for the the first time, "you encounter a stranger, an uncanny startlement rather than a fulfillment of expectations." 

In other words, a real work of art doesn't give you the same old crap that you have seen a million times before, whether it be in plays, poems, novels, or visual art -- sculpture, painting, dance, movies. 

The real thing is new, sometimes shockingly so, although that is not enough to make it art. That sense of strangeness, coupled with truth or insight into the human condition, is one way you can sort the men from the boys, the good from the bad, the wheat from the chaff.

Popular fiction is not usually original. It doesn't go for that. It does just the opposite. It gives you a warmed-over version of the same old story, the same old ideas or sounds or shapes. New wine in old bottles, as they say in Hollywood. Some people, in fact many people, prefer the familiar, like coming home to the same warm oatmeal. They read the same mystery story written under different titles by different authors. And that's fine with me. I don't have a problem with that.

As my friend Adam says, these bestseller writers are not getting paid to write well, they are getting paid to make you turn the pages.

Maybe there is a way to bring them together. We'll see.


-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

LITERARY THRILLER?

I've been a starving writer most of my adult life and have made a living in journalism, teaching and PR. That hasn't been a bad life. I'm not complaining.

I enjoy those things and think they can be valuable, especially journalism and teaching. After all, journalism and school are where most people get their understanding of the larger world, outside their family and friends. (Or should.)

But my passion has always been fiction. I've tried before to write big literary thrillers, and my goal has been to make enough money so I could quit my day job.

In 1996, I had a novel that almost went big. A publisher was talking $500,000 and a two-book deal. BTW, that makes it cheaper for them; they get two for one. Half a million is enough for a break-out book, and I was hoping to be able to write full-time.

But the deal fell through, and I'm back at it again. Am studying bestsellers, first to see if I can find any that don't make me puke, and second to see if I can adapt any of their methods to my own work.

I've read "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo," part of the greatest publishing phenomenon that I know of--the three books in the series have sold more than 40 million copies worldwide--and I'm planning to study John Grisham, John Sandford and other big bestsellers.

I don't know if this is even possible. Obviously, lots of other writers are trying to do the same thing. Even some non-writers. It's not easy.

But some people have succeeded. There are new writers on the bestseller lists all the time. Of course, most of their work is ridden with cliches and full of outrageous plot devices.

But my theory is that you don't have to write crap for money. I don't know if my theory is correct. After all, most of the big-money books are pretty crappy. But then, so are most so-called literary novels.

Anyway, I'm on a quest to make money writing fiction, and I don't want to write crap.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Wish me luck.
I'll need it.

Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

WEAK, CRAPPY WRITING

Praising weak writing is almost as bad as publishing bad writing. Here is an example of great writing:
"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Leo Tolstoi

Later we'll talk about weak writing. In this space I usually talk politics. I complain about our leaders and the fact that they don't listen to me. Hell, they don't even call me.

But here is a different issue, and it is fundamentally important: literature. This art form helps shape civilization, and helps shape our society, and helps shape our concepts of good and evil, and our ideas of moraltiy, and our notions of cause and effect. Indeed, literature helps create our very concept of self.

Since literature is so important, I wonder why it has fallen on hard times. I am tired of seeing praise, in newspapers and magazines, for weak writing, for literature that doesn't fulfill its mission to enlighten us.

Recently (Oct. 21, 2010) I wrote a letter to the managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, in reaction to a book review of his:

Dear Davan Marahaj:

I was surprised when you wrote, in the Book Review Oct. 17, that the following line [from V.S. Naipaul] is famous and is from a masterpiece:

"The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it."

Of course the world is what it is. What else could it be? That is so obvious it is not worth mentioning. Indeed, it goes without saying. And many men in the world are nothing, because they lack the courage or motivation or family connections to become something.

Here, Naipaul is a keen observer of the obvious. The sentence is bland and boring and offers no insight into the world or into human nature.
So why is the line famous?

Sincrerely,
Roger Angle

Of course, I have received no reply. I didn't expect one.

Now, let's compare the V.S. Naipaul line, the opening of "A Bend In The River," with the Tolstoi line above, the opening of "Anna Karenina." Tolstoi gives us some insight into human nature right off the bat. He tells us the truth, and probably a truth that we had not ourselves observed. So he fulfills the first mission of literature, to give us insight into ourselves.

The Tolstoi novel that follows this line is one of the great novels of modern civilization. Someone once asked William Faulkner what three novels one should read, to learn how to write novels. Faulkner, argubly our greatest American novelist, answered, "Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina, and Anna Karenina."

Where are the great writers now? Where are the Tolstois and the Faulkners? I read widely and I don't find them.

What we get instead is praise, in a major American newspaper, for weak writing. I have also seen such praise in the New York Times and in The New Yorker, two of my favorite publications.

I don't think these editors are stupid.

So why do they do it? Has literature come to this?
Praise for weak writing is another form of crap.
Perhaps it is bearable, but it should not be.

Copyright 2010 by Roger R. Angle