SPL Reads!

Lately, I’ve become a fan of mysteries.  At the library, the circulation of mystery titles is fast and furious, and we shelve them by the cartload.  But, in discussing mysteries, I’ve come to learn that it is a varied genre that inspires strong preferences and author allegiances in its readers.  There’s the hard-boiled crowd and the cat mystery crowd.  There’s the horse race mystery crowd and the police procedural crowd.  There are those who like humorous wise-cracking mysteries and those who prefer the darkest psychological suspense offerings.  And all that says nothing of the growing number of supernatural sleuth stories. Saying “I like to read mysteries” is a bit like saying “I’d like to eat food for dinner” in that either statement could entail a wide variety of flavors.  I’ve come to realize that when it comes to many of these flavors, I’m completely out of my depth.

I came to the mystery genre through the classics, and they are still my favorite.  Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, Jim Thompson, Ross MacDonald, and David Goodis hooked me with their hardboiled, tough-guy narratives.  They led me to their narrative progeny: the crime fiction of the self-proclaimed Demon Dog of Crime Fiction, James Ellroy.  Then, I looped back again, and read some of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories.  I found a wealth of great books that were just sitting there waiting to be read, books that I neglected because I’ve never cared for Agatha Christie-style mysteries.  How could I have known?

I’m continually trying to win people over to science fiction, fantasy, and horror.  I tell them that any genre is broad, and contains a wide array of material.  Just because you don’t like Star Trek doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to find some science fiction that you like.  Just because J.R.R. Tolkein is a lot of nonsense to you doesn’t mean you won’t like other fantasy authors.  I guess when it came to the mystery genre, I should have listened more closely to my own advice.  Just because I can’t ever see myself liking a book where a cat solves crimes and I can’t wrap my head around Miss Marple doesn’t mean I dislike mysteries.  It just means I prefer the Demon Dogs to the the Dainty Doilies.  And lucky enough for me, and for those who prefer the Dainty Doilies, the mystery genre is as varied as its readers.

By now, we’ve heard so much about western society’s shrinking attention span that I believe most of us are willing to take it for granted.  The blame gets passed around to television, video games, and the ubiquitous internet boogeyman.  And it’s good fodder for discussions that involve the shaking of heads, the wringing of hands, and the wise stroking of beards.  But I’m not willing to wholeheartedly throw my lot in with the woe-is-me-alas-our-downfall crowd.  I have reason to believe that all hope is not yet lost.  Working at a library as I do, I’m witness to the reading habits of the public.  And this is what I see: tweens and teens lugging around doorstop-sized Harry Potter books, young adults filling up waiting lists for Stephanie Meyer’s latest epic, and adults choosing tomes by Stephen King, Robert Jordan, and Ken Follett (just three authors who have dealt in enormous word counts in their latest novels).  The Avid Readers book club just finished putting to bed Michael Cox’s The Meaning of Night, which weighs in at a healthy 700+ pages (although the jury is still out on how that particular work fared…expect an update soon). In short, it seems that people are still willing to unplug long enough to get lost in a good long book.  And while that does my heart good, I wonder if something has gotten lost in the shuffle:  the short story.

Some of my favorite authors dealt wrote extensively in the short fiction format: H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert E. Howard, Anton Chekov, Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, and Philip K. Dick.  Stephen King is gearing up to publish a new collection of short fiction (some fans, myself included, maintain that some of King’s greatest works are his short stories), promising to bring short stories to the bestseller list.  And magazines like McSweeney’s, Weird Tales, and Harper’s still publish short fiction.  What does all this mean?  Short fiction is still out there, and although it is not the moneymaker (for both authors and publishers) that it once was, short fiction still finds an audience.

It seems strange to expound on the virtues of the short story in an age where the attention span has, if not exactly shrunken, been radically dissected by the myriad demands that our rapidly expanding technology has placed upon our senses.  It seems counterintuitive that single-sitting fiction has lost its appeal in this age in which people insist that they’d read more if only they had the time.  I have been on a bit of a short story kick lately.  I polished off Ray Bradbury’s The October Country and have spent time cherry-picking in The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps: The Best Crime Stories from the Pulps During Their Golden Age.  Most of the stories are ideal for one-sitting readings.  You can gulp down several on a lunch break.  You can read one in the time it takes to brew and drink that evening cup of tea.  It seems that if those who complain that they have no time for reading would perhaps give short fiction a try, they might soon rediscover their love for reading.  And then…who knows…maybe they’ll end up lugging that huge Neal Stephenson book out of the library without even giving a second thought to the television they’re missing or their sadly neglected blogs (ha ha ha).

I read a news report from London this morning that details how Doris Lessing views her Nobel prize for literature as “a bloody disaster.”  Lessing goes on to say that the amount of media attention she has received in the wake of winning the prize has siphoned away much of her writing time, and that it is now unlikely that she will ever write another novel length work of fiction.  Lessing cautioned young writers to appreciate their literary gifts, saying, “Use it while you’ve got it because it’ll go.  It’s sliding away like water down a plughole.”

It’s the kind of story that normally would have struck me as a bit sad.  Anyone who’s everwritten knows that the muse is often fickle and that hitting a solid wall of writer’s block is one of the most frustrating experiences one can have outside of a DMV or a calculus class.  This story didn’t bother me so much.  Why?  Lessing is 88 years old, has published 50+ novels, numerous volumes of short stories, memoirs, and even plays.  All writers should be so lucky, to maintain literary relevance for a period of time during which most authors would have found themselves well past their sell-by date.  And to have enjoyed acclaim in multiple formats and mutliple genres…well, perhaps what Lessing suffers from is simply an embarassment of riches.

I admit that I have only a passing familiarity with Lessing’s works.  I do know that she began began writing science fiction some years into her career, only to be chided by some critics.  I also know that she is often called a feminist writer, a label about which she was apprehensive.  I also know that she has enjoyed much more critical acclaim and longevity than many of my favorite writers.  Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Philip K. Dick, Edgar Allan Poe, and Raymond Chandler all died well shy of their 88th year.  But then again, they never had to feel the pain of the muse slipping down the drain, and maybe that’s a pain most writers would rather be spared…at any age. 

Two years ago, James Frey published his memoir A Million Little Pieces to widespread acclaim.  Oprah picked up the title for her book club, and all the attending sales and accolades that accompany Oprah’s approval were showered on Frey.  Then came the accusations and eventual admissions that parts of the book were greatly exaggerated if not fabricated entirely.

Fast forward two years, and two more authors have published memoirs that have recently been revealed as fabricated:  Margaret B. Jones’ Love and Consequences and Misha Defonseca’s Misha: a Memoir of the Holocaust Years.  Admittedly, both books seem to tell stories that stretch the limits of credibility: the former tells of a half white/half Native American girl who was raised by black foster parents, and sold drugs for a Los Angeles street gang; the latter tells of a girl who travelled with and was protected by a pack of wolves.  It does seem puzzling that publishers that almost assuredly employ professional fact-checkers let these two slip through the cracks.  In Defonseca’s case, the book went unchallenged for so long that it was translated into 18 languages and made into a French film. 

What puzzles me is the amount of public outrage concerning these books.  Sure, many people have read these books and been inspired by them, and now feel cheated.  Nobody likes to be duped, and readers probably feel a bit like Dorothy when she notices the man behind the curtain.

 But, as a writer and lover of fiction, I have to ask if the authenticity of these narratives is really that important.  The words are the same whether they describe real life events or ones conjured out of an author’s imagination.  Also, while certain novels are purely works of imagination, they are as “true” as any piece of nonfiction.  The Grapes of Wrath and The Things They Carried are shot through with truth despite the fact that they are works of fiction.  I suspect that part of the reason authors like Frey feel the need to attach claims of veracity to their works is that such a claim at least partly frees them from the rigors that are attached to crafting great works of fiction: character building, plotting, etc. 

Perhaps all this outrage over these memoirs is just a sign of our troubled times.  People are looking for something to believe in and just feel let down.  I’d point them towards the transformative and inspirational potential of fiction.  Therein are powerful words and images.  True or not.