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Why Most Crime Novels Are Bad Part 2
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| good role model |
Last week I did a little post on why I thought most crime novels were terrible. As a sometime crime reviewer for the press I see a lot of crime fiction and most of the ones that I am forced to read are beyond awful. I do self select good novels to read on my own time but in general the books that are mass marketed to the public are artistically worthless with recycled plots, stereotypical characters, ugly prose and a depressing lack of humour. The key to these books success is heavy marketing by publishers and a supine, unadventurous public. Of course there are good novels in amongst the tat but even good novelists fall into the success trap by turning their creation into a series which eventually leads to diminishing returns. As I discovered in the comments under my post last week there are many noble exceptions to this rule and there are authors who fight the good fight and use their intelligence and creativity to keep their series fresh. But I wonder if this is really the best use of that intelligence and creativity. Instead of writing book #14 in the Bumrash and Crabby mysteries perhaps these successful novelists should take a long look in the mirror and try something original, experimental and different - something that would shake their readers up a bit and make them think. Something that would really challenge them as a writer and perhaps could be looked at 100 years from now as a really interesting
contribution to the culture.
...
This thought came to me last night when I was reading the new Michel Houellebecq novel The Map And The Territory (not, alas, as funny or as biting as Atomised) when I came upon this defintion of an artist:
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| bad role model |
To be an artist in his view, was above all, to be someone submissive. Someone who submitted himself to mysterious, unpredictable messages, messages which commanded you to take a path in an imperious and categorical manner without the slightest possibility of escape (except by losing any notion of integrity and self respect). These messages could involve destroying a work, or even an entire body of work, to set off in a radically new direction, or even occasionally no direction at all without any project or end point in mind.
I like this idea very much. Why not just say no to the publishers who want you to write a book a year for twenty years. All the worst offenders I can think of in this field are rich beyond the dreams of avarice and have provided for their kids and grandkids many times over. Why not just stop and take some time to think. Move to Alaska for a year or Detroit or India. Get away from your comfort zone. Learn a bit about the world. Learn a bit about yourself. Listen to the noise. Listen to the silence. And, to quote Mick Jagger, sometimes give the public what they need instead of always what they want.
87 comments:
I've said many of the same things. Mostly to my dogs, but no matter. At least they listen. Clearly you are a very smart man.
Rick
I'm not smart, just ornery. I envy you having dogs though, we're in a rental and can't have pets but dogs listen. Cats listen too but they listen with contempt.
The quickest way for a best-selling novelist to turn me off to him or her as a person is for me to read anything about what a hard job it is to meet the deadlines for an annual book, or--Gack!--two a year. You have tens of millions of dollars. Write what you want. You'll make another couple of million, at least, on your name alone, even if your new direction isn't too many people's cup of tea.
I've thought about this off and on since Part 1 was posted, and it makes me a little sad to say I'm coming to agree with you more and more about series. It's sad because I like series. I'll stick with a series for a long time if the author's style appeals to me and a world I like to be in has been created. I'm not hopeless about; Robert B. Parker finally wore me down with mailed-in Spenser stories.
The secret may be in the whole world creation thing. Ed McBain never seems stale to me, but he's writing for an ensemble. Robert Crais is giving Joe Pike his own books now. This comment is starting to sound familiar, which leads me to believe I've been down this road before, probably last week.
Cheers.
My New Years Resolution was to stop going to TV show pitch meetings. Partly because I'm too old for that shit, but also because I realized I've got about twenty years of writing left in me (I know there are guys who wrote good books in their eighties but I'm thinking my mid-seventies will be enough) so that's about ten, maybe fifteen books and I'm thinking I want to do all I can to make each one count.
And just today I was thinking that the books I don't like are usually lacking humour, so it was good to see that on your list.
Money is the root of ... ah skip it, I'm not even going there. Look, I agree with the sentiment that you shouldn't call oneself an artist unless you're committed to art.
But what's wrong with producing something merely to entertain, with no artistic merit, and making money off of it?
I don't listen to banal pop music. But it doesn't mean I don't like the odd banal book, or banal video game. Predictable = comfortable = easily adaptable to community. Sometimes I just want to be entertained. I don't usually include music in that because, as neurotheological research demonstrates, it has a profound effect on mental engagement, due to our autonomic response to simple patterns.
But even if I did, what's wrong with deliberately using mindlessness to fire off the ol' endorphins and relax? If it's true of films, as you've noted before, that they can just be mindless fun, why not books?
Dana
Its repulsive when an author does that. Sure if you're Philip K Dick or Jim Thompson and you need to pay the rent, but if you're XX or XXX why push force yourself to turn something that is piss poor?
I dont know the answer to that.
John
You might like this:
Clooney and co. talking about what producers want and what they want is the lowest common denominator:
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/01/hollywoods-condescension.html
LH
Look, now and again I take the kids to McDonalds but I wouldnt take them there every day. Mindless fun is fine once in a while but if thats all you're reading (or writing) then you're in deep shit.
Life isn't supposed to be mindless. We're only on this planet for a few brief moments. Don't you want to get the most of it? Don't you want to be amazed and moved and engaged? Don't you want to laugh? Don't you want to be challenged and shaken? Maybe not every day but once in a while, right?
Adrian, your remark about humor made me think of John Banville, who told Declan Burke that the conventions of crime fiction for some reason did not allow humor. What that told me is that when it comes to crime fiction, John Banville lacks imagination.
I've made several posts under titles such as "What keeps a series fresh?" I've never reached your answer ("Ending it"). but I always wind up citing that man of ideas and chance-taking, Donald Westlake. Of course, I'm on record as preferring the early Parker books to the late ones, so maybe he should have ended the series somewhere before 25 or 26.
I am nearing the end of third in a series whose fourth entry will be published this spring. I'll be interested to see how long the author, can keep ringing just enough changes on his formula to keep the series fresh. So far, so good.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
I meant to add that the author is Mike Knowles. For now he has the violent, calculating, smart, man-on-the-run thing down, and I love the books. Why else would I read three in a week? It will be interesting to see what he does with the series.
Peter
John Banville is a perfect example of marketing trumping talent. Banville was very heavily marketed in the US as a "classy crime writer". Coast to coast book tour, TV and radio promotion, ads in the New Yorker. The only problem is that the Benjamin Black books aren't very good.
Actually that isn't a problem. Perception is all that counts. Perception and shifting a lot of units which I think Banville still does.
Peter
If he wants to be like Lee Child he'll have the smart, calculating man on the move character be smart and calculating and on the move for the next twenty five years.
The most recent Benjamin Black novel, heralded by (idiot) critics as a breakthrough, was certainly not good at all as crime fiction. (You should read my review of it in The Inquirer; I name-checked you, Declan Burke, and a bunch of other crime writers who give the lie to that statement about crime-fiction conventions not being amenable to humor.)
It was the only one of the Benjamin Black books I'd read, and it left me a lot more curious about reading more Banville than it did about reading more Black.
I am more than prepared to accept the notion that the Benjamin Black phenomenon capitalizes on the pathetic desire for respectability on the part of some crime readers.
Adrian, don't slip into anticipatory gloom. For now, Knowles is damned good.
Peter
Don't worry, I never slip into gloom. Gloom is my default stance.
....or move to Birmingham, that'll sort 'em. Mind you, I've never left, wonder what says....
It takes a certain kind of optimism to feel confident that the future will bring new things to be gloomy about.
Swooperman
I love Brum. I use to go there every Saturday night after the Coventry City home games (one wouldn't want to stay in Coventry on a Saturday night obviously).
Pardon me Mr. Clancy, is that the piss? May I?
I get the impression that Tom Clancy is regarded by many as the preeminent pro-wrestling villain of the literary world--and for good reason. He's paid very well, his writing is (mostly) terrible, and his fetishistic worship of weapons and warfare should neither be encouraged nor rewarded.
I probably don't need to point this out, but Clancy doesn't even write his own stuff anymore. Why phone it in when you can pay someone else to phone it in for you?
Back in the mid-90s I saw him do a book signing at a mall in Brookfield, Wisconsin--which is just outside of Milwaukee. Apparently Walden Books (?) dropped the ball on promoting the event because they had him seated at a folding table, outside the entrance to the store in the main concourse of the mall, with a few paperback editions of his latest books, and a hilariously constipated look on his face, but no customers.
Not making this up. I swear it actually happened! Would have been circa October, 1995.
Like Willem DaFoe's character said in the movie Animal Factory, "Don't read that b*tch! He's a police state apologist!"
-Greg
Adrian,
Sure. I didn't say "nothing but." And ask McFetridge, I NEED more mindless fun. I just don't want it.
But I think it's an interesting debate, art vs. pop. And things are popular, and mass consumed, precisely because a) they're not challenging, which is usually antithetical to art, and b) mindlessness helps people relax.
To me, life is about that balance -- McDonald's, but not every day. So there's nothing wrong with writers doing it; the question is whether it's the only writing they produce, and how long they do it for.
I've been a newspaper writer and editor for 23 years but am new to fiction. I honestly see myself as a pulp writer; I don't WANT to write the next great novel, because it's simply a greater challenge than I want and because most people wouldn't understand it anyway. I want to entertain people, and most of them want mindless. That's inherent to the human condition, and if you can't beat it....
Yes, you can challenge and entertain simultaneously, but there's a fine line between too much of one and not enough of the other. And in that case, I defer to what I think people will enjoy.
I've written five novels in the last year, all to be ePublished. Are they good enough to find a publishing home with a traditional house? I don't know. Everyone who's read them seems to think so. But I also know that traditional publishers want one thing: greatness. I don't have the patience to defer to someone else's entirely subjective perspective on art.
The next book is going to be a LOT more challenging, to me and readers, because I'm trying to weave a lot of current subtext into a piece of sci-fi. But then I'll go back to pulp, to cozy mysteries and YA fantasy, because it's FUN.
You should also consider that you're just better at it than most of us; artistic literate expression may just come more easily to you. So it's not always an issue of "selling out" as much as "knowing one's own limitations."
Hey, why the hate for Bumrash & Crabby? I love that series and #14 was one of the best! I have only one argument in defense of the Tom Clancys of the world, and that is that they keep people interested in books as a source of entertainment. If someone's entertained by a Clancy, a Child, or a similar pulpmeister, there's a chance, possibly a slim one, that they'll take a chance on a different or better writer. A hack writer can pull in reluctant readers who might then become enthusiastic readers. Speaking from experience on my bookmobile, novels are definitely not on most people's radar. Most of our circulation is made up of DVDs, teen graphic novels, and kids picture books.
I liked number 24 in the series, "Crabby's First Case.: and number 32: "When Bumrash Met Crabby."
Yeah, I'm not getting into this again. Although why anyone would write about anything other than what most interests and excites them, I can't imagine, whether within a series or not. I don't think the series form is the problem. Publishers ideas are.
I didn't make it to the Val McDermid event last night, and though I'm sure she fits somewhere in the wrong side of the series list by this definition, I thought I'd share what I heard about her appearance. As we feared, it was a fairly small turn out, but that didn't stop Val. Before she started she pulled out a bottle of Scotch and a bunch of Dixie cups and said, "I'm going to have a shot of this. Anyone who wants to join me is welcome."
Apparently a fair crowd took her up on that offer.
Greg
I can't hate Clancy because basically he's an Irish chancer trying to make a living and I have a sneaky admiration for that type.
Although to think of the mighty fallen like that is bloody hilarious.
LH
Yeah that's my point. Its all very well once in a while isn't it. But you wouldn't want it all the time would you?
Five books in a year? Well its not for me to say but that might be too many.
Although Philip K Dick did write 12 novels in a year once and they were all pretty decent so what do I know?
Cary,
I just didn't buy when Bumrash got amnesia and had to learn all his old skills again. Yes it gave us a chance to see the Shaolin Temple and the Congolese jungle and the casinos of Macau but even so a little of the credibility was lost.
Didn't make it around to comment on part 1, but had been thinkng about it since it was posted. I'm very much a standalone reader, however, there are exceptions of course. I'm much more apt to stick with a writer who remains in the same genre, especially, heists, but come up with new players each time, maybe even cameos of prior characters. I'm no different with TV / movies. I'll stick with a series until they jump the shark. Very much waitng to see where the new season of Mad Men will go, as the last season was a let down.
And humor is big with me and not just dialogue, situations can be just as effective if done right.
BTW-Just started reading Arlene Hunt's "Black Sheep" and it is very good so far. First thing I have read by her. Nothing like "the first time' you are exposed to a writer's work and it is good.
Peter
Number 32 was good because yes it was a prequel to the entire series. I enjoyed that, although the bordello scenes went on far too long.
Seana
Love Val McD. She's a lady after my own heart. And this was before she tweeted her love of The Cold Cold Ground.
I dont get the small crowd. I thought Val McD was mega famous.
Sean
In the last post I mentioned Battlestar Galactica. I wish they had ended it in Season 3 before the horrible horrible Season 4.
And the Matrix. Why did they make Matrix 2 and 3 and ruin the mythology and the story?
Actually I know why.
But the bordello flashbacks provided the background for the otherwise inexplicable darker territory so skillfully exploited in Book 29: Bumrash Goes Bad (UK title: Bumrash Feels the Itch.
=====================================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Seana, Val McDermid should draw good turnouts. She's good in front of an audience, too. She did a fine, entertaining, and informative guest-of-honor interview with Denise Mina at one of the recent Bouchercons. (McDermid was the interviewer, Mina the guest.)
It's nothing against McDermid. It is the state of our modern decline. We get great turnouts for a lot of nonfiction events and literary authors who have been marketed as rock stars. But talented people who write fiction, not so much.
I feel bad that I didn't go myself. But there is an aspect to events in the store that can be too much like work. One of the people who hosts events was giving me a ride home tonight and we reminisced about the time where she was hosting and the turn out was so small that she called in her girlfriend as a ringer. I attended legitmately, but felt obliged to pose as someone other than a bookstore worker. Things got tricky when he signed my book and said, "Oh, I thought you were a housewife."
The skills of housewifery are not anything I've ever been accused of before.
And rightly so.
Peter
Ok so maybe I'm wrong, Bumrash Feels The Itch was fantastic. The whole pest control chapter was reminiscent of a William Burroughs novel.
Seana
I told you about the time I read at the mystery bookstore in San Mateo and the only people in the "crowd" were the store owner and his daughter. I thought the latter was a legitimate customer until after the reading was over she whispered "can I go now, dad?"
Classic.
To my credit, I think, I did not break my cover. Although I had not been posing as a housewife, and I did actually like the work of the author in question.
It's all very tricky. Sometimes there is too much else going on in town, sometimes it's a bad weather night, sometimes the publicity gets screwed up. It doesn't have anything to do with the worth of the book, which is why I find McDermid's bringing along her own Scotch so very admirable.
Also, she seems to know how to say Steig Larsson's name right.
I feel a bit like a stranded author in a world of uncaring strangers plunking myself in the middle of the Bumrash and Crabbly discussion, but sometimes a housewife has to do what a housewife has to do.
Unless it involves scrubbing and then all bets are off.
Adrian, remember Book 47, the one where Crabby almost gets married?
I have to say I prefer "new" Bumrash & Crabby. "Old" Bumrash & Crabby is marred by the presence of their comical Indian sidekick, Raj McKorma. So not pc. I hear the series is being developed for a 3D, motion capture film starring Keanu Reeves and Ashton Kutcher. I can't wait.
Book 58 (Crabby Crosses the Line), which explores the uncomfortable truth that cops and criminals sometimes have more in common than the public would ever suspect, breaks new ground in gritty crime-fiction realism.
Book 16, Bumrash Gets the Bum's Rush, is the best locked room puzzle I've ever read. The "room" was actually a giant, hollowed-out block of Wisconsin cheddar artfully decorated to look like a library. The killer simply ate his way out and plastered over the hole with Velveeta. Crabby spotted the texture difference. Oh, damn, that was a spoiler.
Everyone else seems to like Bumrash, but I always had a soft spot for Crabby. His cheese allergy in the episode Cary cited was convincing and soul searchingly true. His tearful soliloquy, 'To Brie or not to Brie' was such a grate, er, great tribute to the Bard, I felt.
I like the one where the crabby member of the team (ironically, Bumrash) is laid up with a bad case of the shingles and, while recuperating with The Riverside Shakespeare, uses the Bard's plots to solve a political killing that had bedeviled all of CID. And oh, what a marvelous title they picked for this, the ninety-seventh installment in the long-running series: Et Tu, Bumrash?
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
The ghost of Bumrash's father was never convincing to me, though. In a little known but soon to be revealed secret, word on the street is that they used striking Dr. Who FX guys to create the spirit. To do him credit, Crabby was never, or seemed never to be entirely convinced.
Yes, Crabby's gruff but good-natured skepticism is one of the series' ever-fresh hallmarks.
Sticking to what one does best, as in the stripped down fortieth book, whose stark, simple, flip-flopped title, Crabby and Bumrash, signifies both a clever twist as well as a return to what has endeared the series to millions of crime readers everywhere, especially in France, where Bumrash et Crabby are often the subject of learned symposia as well as perennials on the list not just of best-selling polars, but of best-selling literature period, and where Gerard Depardieu is rumored to be in negotiation to play Crabby in a cinematic adaptation.
Cary
I am glad you commented. The locked room cheese mystery had me baffled. I must have read that one four of five times and I just didn't get it. All that misdirection about the mouse and the mousetrap...Yup they got me!
Peter
Re: B&C 40. This is exactly what I'm talking about. A bold experiment in prose stylings clearly influenced by Ellroy. Except they went further than Ellroy didnt they. They out Ellroyed Ellroy.
Who can forget that memorable opening paragraph:
Old man Crab. Rash. Farm. Dead Blonde. "Duck you fool!" Nasty business. War is hell. War hell. Where did we park the car?
Seana
I've read the same story. Actually the problem was that Bumrash and Crabby ghost scene was directed by the Warchowski Brothers. Now as everyone knows one of the brothers was becoming a Warchowski sister throughout this episode and apparently this distracted the entire cast.
And here's me wanting a serious, grown-up discussion! Obviously come to the wrong place. I just wanted to say two things really. First I think Adrian's not recognizing that the world has changed into a radically different world. (It happened in about 1992, I think.) Movies are not really movies and books are not really books. They've been transubstantiated.
And has anyone mentioned the wisdom of Theodore Sturgeon who defended genre fiction by noting that 90 per cent of everything was crap? That was then. The figure is now 99 per cent.
Mark
What was it that Oscar Wilde said about taking serious things lightly and light things seriously?
Ol Ted Sturgeon was right. I've used that idea a number of times here on the blog. It was true then and it holds true now. 90% of everything is crap. Surprisingly and worryingly that also includes doctors and pilots.
Adrian, I infer from your apparent endorsement of Oscar Wilde's bon mot in the context of this discussion that you see novel writing and the book trade as serious things. Debatable.
My desire for seriousness was not linked to the seriousness or non-seriousness of the topic. It's congenital.
I don't usually fork out $20 for a paperback book, but I'm glad now that Amazon says my copy of COLD COLD GROUND is on the way.
Reading is an escape, yet if the writer has been inspired and can craft this inspiration, the reader can also become inspired and there is a connection, something that is far deeper than the usual escapist crap, something beyond the mere words on the paper.
Here's the gist of the opening of Peter Abrahams' LIGHTS OUT:
Opening line: Man is the word.
Eddie Nye is in prison, an innocent man framed and sentenced to fifteen years. Reading is his only escape. In the prison library, he starts with Max Brand and reads his way through everything.
"One day Eddie came upon 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.' He returned to it over and over, not unlike a child who can't stop looking at a bloody crucifixion on the wall at Grandma's house."
'God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!
Why looks thou so?' -- With my crossbow
I shot the albatross."
"No explanation, unless you count the small print-text text in the left-hand margin -- 'The ancient Mariner inhospitably killeth the pious bird of good omen' -- and Eddie didn't consider it much of an explanation, didn't even know if the small print was part of the poem or was added later by someone else. No explanation. In one verse everything's cool with the bird, in the next the guy plugs it. Why?'
"Eddie had been through it a thousand times, without getting any closer to the answer. That didn't mean much. Eddie knew there must be plenty he didn't understand about 'The Ancient Mariner.' For example, it had only recently struck him that there might be a reason that the mariner stopped only one of the three wedding guests, instead of telling the story to all of them.'
"Maybe the wedding guest wasn't saying 'Wherefore stopp'st thou me?' but, 'Wherefore stopp'st thou me?' So Eddie wasn't even sure he understood the first verse."
"Just shot the albatross. Why? Because he was jealous it could fly? Because he wanted it to suffer? Because he was afraid of sailing fast? Or because it was possible to do? None of the answers felt right. It occurred to him that the shooting was melodramatic. Maybe the whole goddamn thing was melodramatic."
But after Eddie gets out of prison, neither the past nor the enigma of the poem will leave him alone. This is the start of what becomes a thriller deluxe, one with building tension and genre adventure, but with the literary message of the albatross behind it.
Man is the word.
I don't usually fork out $20 for a paperback book, but I'm glad now that Amazon says my copy of COLD COLD GROUND is on the way.
Reading is an escape, yet if the writer has been inspired and can craft this inspiration, the reader can also become inspired and there is a connection, something that is far deeper than the usual escapist crap, something beyond the mere words on the paper.
Here's the gist of the opening of Peter Abrahams' LIGHTS OUT:
Opening line: Man is the word.
Eddie Nye is in prison, an innocent man framed and sentenced to fifteen years. Reading is his only escape. In the prison library, he starts with Max Brand and reads his way through everything.
"One day Eddie came upon 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.' He returned to it over and over, not unlike a child who can't stop looking at a bloody crucifixion on the wall at Grandma's house."
'God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!
Why looks thou so?' -- With my crossbow
I shot the albatross."
"No explanation, unless you count the small print-text text in the left-hand margin -- 'The ancient Mariner inhospitably killeth the pious bird of good omen' -- and Eddie didn't consider it much of an explanation, didn't even know if the small print was part of the poem or was added later by someone else. No explanation. In one verse everything's cool with the bird, in the next the guy plugs it. Why?'
"Eddie had been through it a thousand times, without getting any closer to the answer. That didn't mean much. Eddie knew there must be plenty he didn't understand about 'The Ancient Mariner.' For example, it had only recently struck him that there might be a reason that the mariner stopped only one of the three wedding guests, instead of telling the story to all of them.'
"Maybe the wedding guest wasn't saying 'Wherefore stopp'st thou me?' but, 'Wherefore stopp'st thou me?' So Eddie wasn't even sure he understood the first verse."
"Just shot the albatross. Why? Because he was jealous it could fly? Because he wanted it to suffer? Because he was afraid of sailing fast? Or because it was possible to do? None of the answers felt right. It occurred to him that the shooting was melodramatic. Maybe the whole goddamn thing was melodramatic."
But after Eddie gets out of prison, neither the past nor the enigma of the poem will leave him alone. This is the start of what becomes a thriller deluxe, one with building tension and genre adventure, but with the literary message of the albatross behind it.
Man is the word.
Sorry about the duplicate post.
Now that I think about it, one of the biggest best-selling writers almost never writes series -- Stephen King. (With the exception of "The Dark Tower," which he claims sold less well than his other titles).
The quote dropper is back.
This essay by John Connolly ("On Experimentation") has always resonated with me and I think it is worth reading in in its entirety (http://johnconnollybooks.blogspot.com/2006/07/on-experimentation.html).
I think it speaks well to this topic and compliments it.
The whole thing is quotable so I would urge everyone to read the whole thing but here is one of his conclusions:
"At the closing session of the Harrogate festival, I conducted a public interview with Jeff Deaver, in the course of which he spoke of his recent novel, Garden of Beasts. It is, I think, his best book, but it probably sold less than any book he has written since he found mainstream success, and it crashed and burned in the U.S. It wasn’t because it was a bad book, far from it, but it wasn’t like his other books. He deviated from his own formula, choosing to write a historical thriller set in Nazi Germany instead of a contemporary thriller set in America, and he suffered for it. During the interview, he admitted that the experience had probably made him more reluctant to experiment, and I felt that was a shame. I had enjoyed reading Garden of Beasts and seeing another side to Jeff’s writing. Perhaps, in time, he’’ll reconsider, for it’s important that writers with some commercial clout should take the odd chance, that they should try to introduce a little edge to the mainstream and foster an environment conducive to a little experimentation."
Remember the wry send-up of Hollywood pomposity when B&C try to solve the disappearance of glamorous screen goddess in Bedtime for Bumrash?
Gavin, in re Stephen King, do horror writers tend to write series, the way criem writers do?
I think series books are in Fantasy and crime much more so then other genres. I don't think you see a lot of horror series (of course there are exceptions).
Someone coined the term fillology (if I'm remembering correctly) for the long running, epic fantasy series' that you see in that genre.
Brian, that makes sense, since fantasy and science fiction do things on a big scale -- creating worlds and such. Thanks.
Mark
Nah, nothing's really worth taking THAT seriously. I do get a bit worked up sometimes about the state of fiction and crime fiction in particular, but after I go to a quiet corner and listen to some Lou Reed I'm ok again.
Richard
You made the wise choice. And look if you hate the book there's always ebay.
I like that opening. Nice and existential and Biblical all of which are good things. Its funny when Cormac McCarthy started writing like that in the 70's his books were way out of the mainstream, hardly ever reviewed and sold no copies and now he's a national treasure.
Brian
I read Garden of Beasts and thought it was his best book by a long way. He really went out of his comfort zone. I dont know why he worries about the sales figures. Sales figures dont mean anything. Doing your best work is what counts. Thats why I hate film review programmes that start off with the box office top 10. The box office top 10 is not related to the quality of film product in the slightest, but merely reflects what teenage boys are going to this week.
Gav
He doesn't write series on the whole and he's experimental in many ways but I still think he could try harder.
Peter
I do remember that one. It was just before Bumrash's Last Case - the unfortunate syphilitic themed time travel one off set in turn of the century Vienna.
Brian
It's what the punters want and have been conditioned to expect. We really didn't need six Dune novels or another six Thomas Covenant novels but thats what the public demanded apparently.
The critics weigh in!!!
"Bumrash and Crabby give the people what they want."
-- The Express
"The Bumrash and Crabby series has gone on far longer than many reasonable people would have expected."
-- The Mail
"Chandleresque!"
-- The Mirror
Peter
Yeah but don't forget The Sun (London)
"I picked up Bumrash Takes The High Road cos Jenny was reading it on 'The Only Way Is Essex'. What a effing disappointment. A bunch of old codgers faffing about in a Morris Oxford in bloody Scotland. Rubbish with bells on from start to finish. Gimme Jeffrey Archer any day of the week except Saturday cos I been on the piss on Friday aint I?"
I talked to my coworker who hosted the Val McDermid event today. She said that they started talking about how great Irish crime fiction is these days, and McDermid then said how great The Cold Cold Ground was. "The best he's written," she said. She also had a good word to say for Stuart Neville and they got into their Tana French love.
My book highlight today and there were a couple of them today actually was this young guy asking for Cormac McCarthy's The Road.He'd seen the movie and really wanted to read the book. After I took him over to the section, he told me that his family were all big readers and he was the only one that wasn't. he wanted a book that was HIS book and it sounded like McCarthy might do it for him. He then told me a lot about all the warring Mc clans of Scotland and Ireland and I understood that he wasn't really a non-rader at all, he just hadn't found his subject area yet. If I see him again I'll mention Daniel Woodrell and Charles Goodis to him. He'd probably like Dead I Well May Be if I could find a less pricey edition for him.
I like Crabby in The Cold Cold Ground and that's no joke.
That reader might like the novel that explores the mischievous sense of humor that lies behind our hero's customarily grim facade in Crabby Takes the Piss.
Seana
Well I hope that wasnt just the whisky talking.
Val's great though isnt she? You'll have to catch her on the next wave.
Seana
Yeah I like Crabby too. It was fun writing that guy.
Peter
At least you don't seem to have encountered any of the cross over ones: Crabby Meets 007 or Crabby And Jack Carter Stop Aleister Crowley.
Anyone up for a book-length critical appreciation of Bumrush and Crabby? We'll need about 30 people with nothing better to do who just hate to be paid. Each one contributing a five thousand-word essay, minimum. We can call it 'Down Those Crabby Streets (With Bumrush)'; or, more poignantly perhaps, 'Bum Crabs'.
Cheers, Dec
I agree with the sentiment that you shouldn't call oneself an artist unless you're committed to art.nice post thanks for sharings
Coventry City !!! Good lord.....being a Villan born & bred, how do I unsubscribe lol
Declan, I'm up for your suggestion, but only if John Banille writes a chapter. He understands the genre so deeply that I'll even suggest a title for his contribution: "Banville Gets Bumrash."
No, I haven't yet read Crabby Gets Graphic: The Comic. But I did the way it shows the dark side of our heroes. I hear it had lots of full-bleed color, dark shadows, and glum expressions. And I hear that when Alan Moore drags the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen into yet another century, Mina Murray has a tempestuous affair with Bumrash.
Adrian have you ever read Stephen Graham Jones? Great writer who pushes himself to do something new with every book. He occupies that same space that Evenson does in that he is a genre writer who is his own genre.
I just read his latest blog post and there was a line that made me think of you and that you would appreciate it:
"...because no way would I allow myself to use the same terrain again and again. I’ll never be on of those postage-stamp writers, who can milk fifty books from a few acres."
Brian
I have read Jones. He's great.
In fact I should have done a blog post about him and Brian Evenson ages ago.
I blogged about Brian Evenson last Halloween.
http://trackofthecat.blogspot.com/2011_10_01_archive.html
Evenson used to be a member of the Cormac McCarthy Society, and he wrote some McCarthy crit-lit. The ALIENS: NO EXIT novel I discuss is the least of his books. His others are dark and often darkly funny, full of big ideas and a search for truth. A writer's writer, as we say.
I'm still waiting on my copy of COLD, COLD GROUND. They must be shipping the book by tugboat up the Mississippi River.
Thanks Richard I'll go check that out now. And yes I agree with everything you say about Evenson.
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