Dave wrote:
> Btw. A very entertaining pure pulp book that I just
finished is The
> Last Quarry by Max Allan Collins. Touches on no
universal truths,
> but I still enjoyed this book immensely
I enjoyed it too, but mostly because I believed in those
characters. And that's what I meant about universal
"truths."
When I was blathering on previously about universal truths, I
wasn't talking about deep insights into the cosmos or
anything -- just those sort of common (ie: universal) things
we all do and say or think, that sort of self-recognition or
empathy that good writing can do, that moment when you think,
"Gosh, that's what I'd do!" or "Gee, how would I get out of
that?" or "Boy, that guy's a creep" or "Yeah, I know a guy
like that" or whatever.
That's the sort of "truthiness" I meant.
Whether you're reading hard-boiled or sci-fi or whatever,
characters have to behave in a way that is true, not just to
the internal logic of their own world but, transposed, to
ours.
The characters in THE LAST QUARRY do that, more or less
(given that they're naturally a little larger than life --
Hey, it's FICTION!).
Which goes back to what I was saying about how all fiction
asks us to suspend disbelief somewhere along the line, and
we're all willing to suspend it in different areas, depending
on our genre preferences. For me, it's human behaviour. If
the characters don't act in the ways people like them would
act, I'm pulled out of the story. And anything that pulls me
out of the story is bad -- too many, and I may never go
back.
Which is why I view most cozies and serial killer novels with
such disdain -- the murders are too often committed for
artificial-feeling or hard-to-swallow reasons ("he's crazy"
is a lazy writer's cop-out, IMHO). Chandler praised Hammett
for giving murder back to those who commit it for a reason,
and I think that's part of the HB genre's appeal for
me.
But that very artificiality, that once-removed motive for
murder, may be another person's favourite thing about cozies
or serial killer books -- it allows them to get on with the
puzzle aspect or the chase part of the story (or, in the case
of narrated-by-the-serial-killer books, the violence-as-porn
bits that make certain readers all tingly in their naughty
bits).
It's just a different area where they choose to suspend their
disbelief.
And Kerry wrote:
> Kevin might have argued that it is
> unreal to have people threaten their associates
without some weapon at
> hand. Or otherwise.
Nope. Not me. If the writer's done his job, I can believe
almost anything.
What I would object to would be a character acting completely
out of character and threatening an associate with a baseball
bat. That would be a matter of the writer failing to do their
job.
And all the lame bleating about "But it happened in real
life" doesn't impress me. To satisfy, fiction has to make
some sort of sense; real life doesn't. Citing "real life" to
justify literary weaknesses and implausibilities just doesn't
cut it -- it's often the last straw of writers who don't know
how to craft believable characters.
Hell, look at Stephen King. Do I believe in vampires and
werewolves and UFOs and that burying dead kids in an ancient
Indian burial ground will bring them back to life?
Nope.
But I believe (trust) his characters, so I'm more likely to
believe the things that happen to them -- at least while I'm
in that fictional world. The scenes of domestic life at the
beginning of PET SEMETARY (the kids' squabbling over cereal
at breakfast, the low- level bickering, etc.) may be some of
the most "true" fiction I've ever read. So I was already
hooked when the weird shit started happening.
Yet who would accuse King of writing "realistic"
novels?
Kevin Burton Smith The Thrilling Detective Web Site http://www.thrillingdetective.com
RARA-AVIS home page: http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/
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