djones brought this up a while ago as a question. I was reading reviews of Elmore Leonard’s novels and came across this in a review Margaret Atwood wrote of Tishomingo Blues in the new York Times:
As to what Leonard is up to beyond the texture of his prose, it’s what he’s been up to for some time. A good deal of any Leonard novel—or those of, say, the last twenty years—consists of deadpan social observation. John le Carré has maintained that, for the late twentieth century at least, the spy novel is the central fictional form, because it alone tackles the implementation of the hidden agendas that—we suspect, and as the evening news tends to confirm—surround us on all sides. Similarly, Elmore Leonard might argue—if he were given to argument, which he is not—that a novel without some sort of crime or scam in it can hardly claim to be an accurate representation of today’s reality. He might add that this is especially true when that reality is situated in America, home of Enron and of the world’s largest privately held arsenal, where casual murders are so common that most aren’t reported, and where the CIA encourages the growing and trading of narcotics to finance its foreign adventures.
Ms. Atwood captured the sentiments running through my head but didn’t get on page back when Jones first broached the question: that of the ‘largest privately held arsenal.’ Guns are everywhere, and they tend to go off all the time. How can American fiction not include plot lines with at least a hint of gun violence? A story has to build tension, and in today’s America the source of tension, as Atwood points out, is going to involve crime, scams, and violence. Makes sense to me.
Ms Atwood, citing John Le Carré, would have us feel that we’re all terribly anxious about some ‘hidden agendas’ going on somewhere out there, or in here, or whatever. Certainly the catalog of Vast Conspiracy stories is fairly large, added to the Espionage section. I ask myself: am I worried about hidden agendas? Are you? Is anyone? Everybody seems happy enough to turn up & vote every couple years, throw the bad guys out of office. Even if you see Espionage & Vast Conspiracy as subgenres of Crime, as I do, you have to go way out there to believe they’re reflecting some kind of widespread anxiety, or whatever function they’re supposed to serve.
Scrum, & probably many other people, vaguely see crime fiction as a function of another anxiety, homicide by gunshot. There are probably quite a few people worried about being shot in the head. Personally, as far as crime is concerned, I’ve always been most worried about the possibility of home invasion. I believe a lot of other people are, too. Of course, you can get insurance for home invasion (you can get insurance against being shot in the head as well, although it doesn’t guarantee to get your head back to you in one piece, much less new-for- old). There aren’t any crimewriters that I know of making a success out of crimes against property only, although I suppose the fear of home invasion could include anxiety about homicide, being home-invaded & shot in the head to top it all. How many people are anxious about being victim of a serial killer? Despite the statistical odds of nearly zero against it? Is this reflected by the huge catalog of Serial Killer fiction? There are some writers out there who write exclusively about serial killers. I have to ask myself if any of my many anxieties are about becoming some superhuman evil genius’ dinner.
I’m trying to put together my thoughts about what’s behind all this. Does anyone else have any ideas? What about the following proposition, which I’ll put in scare-quotes just so you’ll know it’s only one of many possible ideas. With all this crime in the movies, on the TV & in books -
-“we are buying into a distorted version of reality.”
BTY there’s a newbie (on another thread) called ‘Devil’ something, he’s put spam on the Forum. Cheapo medication this time.
-“we are buying into a distorted version of reality.”
Yes, I think there’s a lot of truth in this.
I’m reminded of all that talk about 50’s zombie and horror movies as being metaphors for the cold war. Invasion of the Body Snatchers as this widespread fear of communism lurking under every bed. As if America (and Americans) were so weak and so easily swayed (worried about nuclear bombs, sure, and some idiots using them, but without those bombs no one would be afraid of “communism”). I think it had a lot more to do with something a lot more primal, like fear of the dark.
So, whether peope really are, “terribly anxious about some ‘hidden agendas’ going on somewhere out there,” people are generally anxious about something in their lives (jobs, relationships, kids, something) and it’s an easy emotion to exploit.
I remember reading once about how doctors first starting out tend to over-diagnose rare illnesses because the odd ones are what stuck out in med school. Likewise the “odd” crime stuff really stands out, gets over-reported and seems to be far more common that it really is.
Still, in terms of Elmore Leonard novels, the crimes in the books are usually of the most “real” and “common” variety. There aren’t really seriel killers or conspiracies or wildly unusual things that are part of that “distorted version of reality.” Extortion, armed robbery, whatever, the crimes are the kind that really do happen often, so I don’t think his books are in this category.
) Let’s say that storytelling is often about dysfunctional behavior & human beings like watching it without getting involved - fiction as a play- & learning-activity.
So in the Middle ages it was about sinning, getting in trouble with God. Then, in the 19th century, when the novel became the middle class’s preferred form of storytelling, it was about the kind of subtle gradations of (middle class) polite behavior you see in Trollope & James.
Then in the 20th century, when people start to do whatever they want, as long as it doesn’t break the law, storytelling starts being about breaking the law.
Crime is a public matter; it isn’t about your conscience, your state of grace. It isn’t about subtle manoevering in polite society, trying to increase your standing; either you’re a criminal or you’re not.
This is simplistic, but I like the sound of it. You have to understand I’m not an Eng. Lit. kind of person. I’m trying to see fiction as a basic human activity. But there are other issues with Robb’s discovery or revelation that I’ll take up on the appropriate thread, the “genre/literary” question.
Recently an article appeared in Newsweek that was basically a conversation between writers John Banvile and Donald Westlake and one of the questions they were asked was: In the past few years the fiction best-seller lists have become monopolized by novels about crime and murder. What do you make of that?
Banville (a “literary” writer who wrote his first “crime” novel under the name Benjamin Black) said:
I think we live in a very violent time. The vast majority of people have never seen any violence in their lives at all. They might drive their car into their neighbor’s car and their neighbor might shout at them, but that’s about as near as they get to violence. So there’s this thing we’re missing out on: “There’s all this violence, all this blood and horror and so on. It must be quite fun. But I don’t see any.” So they get it from books. And I notice this trend of thrillers that are absolutely dripping with blood, seriel killers slicing people up.
Okay, fine, except, I think this says it better:
djones - 08 April 2007 12:57 PM
So in the Middle ages it was about sinning, getting in trouble with God. Then, in the 19th century, when the novel became the middle class’s preferred form of storytelling, it was about the kind of subtle gradations of (middle class) polite behavior you see in Trollope & James.
Then in the 20th century, when people start to do whatever they want, as long as it doesn’t break the law, storytelling starts being about breaking the law.
Crime is a public matter; it isn’t about your conscience, your state of grace. It isn’t about subtle manoevering in polite society, trying to increase your standing; either you’re a criminal or you’re not.
Now if there is some kind of underlying thing going on, it might be that we’re afraid of crime and violence on some level, the same way we’re afraid of the dark, and reading books about crime and violence is like turning on the light and seeing it for what it really is.
I think there are a lot of characters in Elmore Leonard’s books that a lot of the people reading them have never met - and in many cases are afraid of the idea of them.
I’ve seen this piece about Westlake & the other guy somewhere else. Or maybe it was a couple of other old frauds. Anyway, the point being made is about the last 20 years or so, which is quite reasonable; Crime as a genre in books & films has become more explicitly violent. But then the violence in most other kinds of fiction has become more explicit & gory as well. Horror, obviously; war, sci-fi, James Bond films, even childrens’ stories (remember poor Timmy). An alternative explanation for this is that the technology has improved. Considered as a kind of collage of 9mm exit wounds, Scorsese’s recent Departed is a step forward from his earlier Taxi Driver. Who was it that thought of adding to film gunfights the sound of spent cartridges chinking on the pavement? Think of Pacino’s big restaurant scene in The Godfather: how much better it would be with chinking cartridges & exit wounds.
My point here, obviously, is that it is absurd to argue that these uh technical details mirror anything going on in the real world. This is without invoking the belief (mine, for instance) that since 1945 there is much less violence in the Western World than at any time before (serious theorists of this Forum might remember Michael Moore’s argument along these lines in his film about Columbine).
So you might want to explain the added attention to detail in all kinds of stories over the last 20 years in some other way. What interests me, as a DF theorist, is the growth of Crime into the predominant form of storytelling over the last 100 or 120 years. From the beginnings of Sherlock Holmes, to the emergence of the Hard Boiled style & film noir, to the collapse of the Western & consequent proliferation of the cop series - which, for me, is where EL came in.
This is without invoking the belief (mine, for instance) that since 1945 there is much less violence in the Western World than at any time before (serious theorists of this Forum might remember Michael Moore’s argument along these lines in his film about Columbine).
Well, I think you’re right about this, but it may depand on how you define vioence (wow, really getting into the teoretical now, eh?). Certainly organized violence like war has pretty much disappeared from the western world and been “outsourced” as we say, so far fewer people in the western would will have much first-hand experience (and even this is even much more a European thing, rather than north American) than they did 100 or 120 years ago when armies were marching all over. Now, some people say that random, “stranger” violence (where the victim doesn’t know the attacker) has decreased but that domestic, family, violence has remained about the same and maybe even increased. Who knows for sure?
But crime and violence are two different things. What was a crime 120 years ago sometimes isn’t anymore and what wasn’t a crime sometimes is (some drug use, even some kinds of domestic vioence and so on). Is there more or less crime now? Do people feel personally affected by crime?
So, really, this emergence of crime fiction as entertainment also comes into play around the time of the emergence of voting democracies with more and more people defining themselves as “citizens” with equal standing in the eyes of the state, or secular, law. The “law” then, takes on more importance. At first this becomes stories about enforcing these laws (equally for all, because now we’re all in it together) and catching bad guys and then later looking into the conditions and circumstances from which these criminals come.
Well, thanks for not pointing out my typos, at least. And what’s this, I’m only supposed to look at my own posts ten times? What kind of half-assed narcicism is that?
Anyway, in doing some research for something else, I came across this:
“In the early 20th Century a wave of Puritanism swept North America. One consequence was a concerted effort to criminalize personal vice. Gambling, buying the services of prostitutes, using recreational drugs and even the consumption of alcohol were criminalized or, were they already criminal offenses, the laws were more rigorously and systematically enforced. No longer would cities be permitted to host “red light districts” in which otherwise legitimate citizens could temporarily sate their appetites before returning to a world of respectability. In response there was a dramatic change in the direction of law enforcement, the nature of which still does not seem fully understood. For the first time the main thrust of police action shifted from combating predatory offenses (robbery, extortion, embezzlement and the like practiced at the expense of an unwilling public) to attacking enterprise crimes (in which underground entrepreneurs attempted to service the forbidden consumption needs of a complicit public). Though today both are simply lumped together in the criminal code, there was and still remains a profound difference between the two in terms of their economic nature and social impact.”
This is well analyzed by Stephen Fox in his Blood And Power: Organized Crime in Twentieth Century America, Penguin, New York: 1989.
This may point towards more interest by more people in crime as a more public fact of life and then spilling out into pop culture - books, movies, radio, tv, whatever.
I think you can actually see this in Elmore Leonard novels now. One of the things that keeps coming up in conversations between Carlos Webster and his Dad is this idea of the, “change in the direction of law enforcement.” Carlos talks about the bad guys not being bad and he’s not really sure what he’s going to do - none of this willfully blind, “It’s my job—it’s the law,” of the boring old crime fiction. Even in the modern urban crime novels there’s so much ambiguity—in the cops and the bad guys—that people ask a lot, who is the bad guy?
There might be so much interest in crime fiction because of the difference between illegal and immoral. When once the church decided both on its own it was simple (and brutal), but when the two got seperated it got more complicated and needed to be talked about more to be better understood. Pop culture is a good way to open up the discussion.
Of possible interest to you guys, Elmore and Westlake will discuss Crime Fiction for Mystery Writer’s of America East on Tuesday. I hope to get a copy of that conversation.
Ha, yeah, a book deal. We should. Of course, it would be too literary and academic and used by lazy prof’s to pick apart EL’s books and impress undergrad co-eds.
Seriously, though, would you mind if I used some of your stuff in a reading I’m doing later this month in Toronto?
