"...adding a homelife and real problems to a detective character slows down
the story to hand and can add a saccharine element from which the story
never recovers. Doyle, Hammett, and Chandler had it right: no matter how
engaging the detective may be, he is merely a tool to unravell the real
story being told backward in a mystery. Any element added to the character
detracts from the writer's job, it does not add to it. The only reason for a
detective to go to an AA meeting is to find a killer or find a witness to
the killing. If the detective need to go to the meeting for his own
purposes, the reader doesn't need to know about it."
Oh, dear. I should know better than to respond to this, and I'll say right
now that I don't intend to get into a lengthy dialogue with Mr. King about
it (having seen how some of those go), but come on. In the art of fiction,
anything can be combined by a writer sufficiently talented, including genre
and non-genre elements. From any more nuanced point of view than that of a
hard-core genre purist who wants predictable experiences over and over, this
statement is inane drivel. How, in the hands of a competent writer, putting
forward enriched characters with "added elements" somehow detracts from the
"writer's job," is beyond me, no matter what type of story we're talking
about. I can't disparage the statement strongly enough.
Mark Harris
-- Mark R. Harris 2122 W. Russet Court #8 Appleton WI 54914 (920) 470-9855 brokerharris@gmail.com[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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