A recent debate on the merits of art vs. entertainment (a good roundup by La Weinman here) got me started thinking about what kinds of stuff I myself want to write, and why. The upshot: I want to write entertaining stories, and if they rise above “mere” entertainment, well, that’s a bonus.
That’s not to say I don’t want to write stories with great characters, or stories that say something about the human condition, but it is true that, to me, their value as entertainment trumps most other considerations. In part this is because sometimes great writing comes with drawbacks built in. Raymond Chandler, David Goodis, and James Ellroy all write directly from their psyches to the page, and they’ve produced some great and powerful stories, but their stories are also flawed in some ways.
Part of this is a renewed emphasis on craft on my part – how can I take these characters and this plot and write them as cleanly as possible? I remember reading, years ago, that light verse must be much more tightly constructed than the more serious variety, and I’d say that’s true with fiction, too. You can forgive whatever flaws you find in “Rew Wind” or “Trouble Is My Business”. You might not be so generous to “Bonnie And Clyde’s Last Ride”.
The power of a realization like this is that it frees me from guilt, the guilt of not writing what I “ought” to be writing. I did my best to leave that behind when I chose to write crime fiction, and I’m not going to feel bad about it now.
OK, that’s pretty ponderous stuff, so let’s switch gears: “It was the only job I was qualified for, besides running around in my underwear beating the shit out of people.” Can we just decide that Pat Lambe is “the Ray Banks of America”? He’s got the same dark humor, the same keen eye for the day-to-day realities of the working class, and a powerful narrative voice to match the inimitable Banquitez.
The rest of the latest issue of Thug Lit is also pretty good. This one and Crime Scene Scotland, also new to me, make the passing of Plots With Guns a litle easier to take.
(Oh, and Dave, if you’re lucky you’ll someday be known as “the Graham Powell of New Jersey”. If you’re lucky.)
In the end I think the entertainment vs art issue is something for critics and professors to worry about. I don’t think for a minute that Shakespeare worried about this. Writers have to be on the entertainment side. Shakespeare certainly was. He would not have understood the concept of a “Good” play that didn’t fill the seats.
I think that there is a dichotomy. My wife’s ex-husband is an English prof, so she knows the ‘lit’ scene reasonably well, where authors must be tortured to be any good, and books don’t have to be entertaining, they have to be deep. The deeper the better, in fact, and if a story is so deep that nobody can understand it (which is, oddly, exactly the same condition as if it were actually a really BAD book), well, that’s the best of all.
The other branch are ‘light’ writers, those who write entertaining popular fiction. There, a book can be deep, but it can’t be so fricken’ deep that nobody gets it, and the primary task is to be entertaining; to tell a good story in an engaging way. If you manage to make some money along the way, so much the better.
I’ve read some of each, and I think I prefer to write entertaining stuff. If that makes me a sellout, well, so much the better.
The Graham Powell of New Jersey? Just wait until I’m the Graham Powell of Texas… Oh yes… all the plans are in place…. mwa ha ha.
I think we’re on the same page, Dean. My gripe is with books that drag their ambition around like a ball and chain when the story won’t support it.
For example, Robert Crais LA REQUIEM went into the background of one of the main characters, to very good effect. It’s probably Crais’ best book. But he did the same thing in his next two books, which were not bad but were not as good as REQUIEM or the previous entries in the series.
On the other hand, a book like Lehane’s MYSTIC RIVER was pretty ambitious and pulled it off rather well.
Frequently “ambition” equals “pretension”, and I can’t stand pretentious writing. In my own stories I want to emulate the pulp writers of the 30s and 40s and the paperback writers of the 50s – tell a good story, then move on.
My rules for writing are 1) Avoid cliches and 2) don’t write a story unless you can bring something new to it. And, if possible, use a light touch.
Just wait until I’m the Graham Powell of Texas…
My wife would break you in half.
Can I be the Graham Powell of Central California? I was going to be the Dave White of Central California, but I can’t get the accent right.