Tied Up With A Black Velvet Brand

By email, yesterday:

“I see that John Banville [right] is on the Books 2008 program under his Benjamin Black name, but still not part of the crime fiction program. Don’t worry, I’m sticking with the crime fiction part, but that was nonetheless interesting to see. A snipe on Banville’s part at the genre that he has condescended to join?”

  Erm, probably. Although a straw-poll among the contributing Irish crime writers as to whether Black’s novels would render him worthy of inclusion might produce some interesting results. On the basis of THE LEMUR, I’d say yes.
  Meanwhile, if anyone can offer a phrase about crime fiction they’re heard more often in 2008 than, “That’s not surprising, since Benjamin Black is really John Banville, the Irish writer who won the 2005 Man Booker Prize …” (© Canada.com), we’d love to hear it.
  Do you think if Rob Smith wins the Booker he’ll adopt a pseudonym for writing literary fiction?

On Crime Fiction And Respectability

When an author references another writer’s novel twice in one book, it’s fair to presume that he or she is drawing attention and inviting comparisons. In THE KILLING CIRCLE, Andrew Pyper twice refers to THE MAGUS, the John Fowles novel which blends a number of genre staples, among them the thriller, the war novel, the supernatural and quasi-scientific propositions.
  Asked at an advanced age what he would change if he could live his life over again, Kingsley Amis thought for a moment and said, “Well, I wouldn’t read THE MAGUS.” I love it, although I know a lot of people hate it. But the point about THE MAGUS is that it’s a literary novel that has a hell of a lot of fun with mashing up genres.
  THE KILLING CIRCLE also blends genres, most obviously those of crime and horror, although, given that its narrator is an aspiring author who lacks the imagination to create a unique story, it’s also intended as a serious meditation on the writing process. In that context, the references to THE MAGUS are presumably intended as reminders to the reader that Andrew Pyper is engaged in a literary activity, despite the genre staples.
  Which brings me to a comment Adrian McKinty – yep, him again – left on a post further down the page, vis-à-vis the consecration of crime fiction as ‘interesting and important’. To wit:

“One thing though about Banville, Rushdie, Chabon etc. writing crime novels is that they would never have ventured into the territory in the first place had not the zeitgeist begun to see crime books not as disposable pulp fiction but actually as interesting and important. When the Library of America started bringing out Chandler, Hammett, Cain and Highsmith in annotated quality hardbacks, it was a sign that the critical community had embraced those writers and no longer despised them. The rising tide began to float the boats of the whole genre.”

  Writing about the inclusion of Rob Smith’s CHILD 44 on the Booker Prize long-list for the LA Times recently, Sarah Weinman made a similar point:

“And yet, if CHILD 44 -- a serial killer novel that takes place in the last years of Stalin’s Russia -- appears at first glance to be a brash upstart, a closer look suggests that its inclusion might not be so unlikely after all. Indeed, this is the most recent example of the blurring of the line between crime fiction and literature, which raises hope that the so-called genre wars are lurching toward, if not an end, then at least a tentative cease-fire.”

  Yes, yes – but is this actually a good thing? Crime writing has always had stylists as fine as anything the literary world can offer, if only the reader has eyes to see, but the idea that respectability is about to be conferred on the genre seems somehow grotesque, and not least because the respectability is to be conferred by the literary types.
  I write crime fiction, but I’m not a crime fiction nut. As I’ve said elsewhere, crime fiction only accounts for about a quarter of my reading, or maybe as much as a third. I read for all kinds of reasons, although mainly because I’d probably go blind if I didn’t. I can read Salman Rushdie and John McFetridge, say, as I did earlier this year, and be equally impressed by both.
  But when I read crime fiction, I read it for the adrenaline buzz of knowing that it is getting under the skin of the world we live in, broaching taboos and creeping down the dark alleyways that we’d prefer weren’t so dark, or there at all, and doing it with an authenticity and immediacy that makes it utterly believable, even if I’d rather it wasn’t true. And as far as I’m concerned, respectability is far more likely to blunt that edge than hone it. To mangle Groucho Marx, I don’t want to be in any club that’d have me.
  Every writer should aspire to be as good as Rushdie, Chandler, Highsmith and Fowles. But that’s not the same thing as aspiring to write a Booker Prize nominee, or to write a novel worthy of the approval of the self-anointed adjudicators of quality.
  I hope for Rob Smith’s sake that he wins the Booker Prize. But I hope for crime fiction’s sake that he doesn’t.

The Long Tail Versus Tomorrow’s Garbage: Why Book Blogs Kick Traditional Media Into A Cocked Hat

The slashing of the Los Angeles Times’ books section has kick-started the old ‘death of books’ jalopy again, with traditional media commentators unsure of whether they should celebrate book-related websites and blogs as the last hope for book reviews, or wring their hands despairingly because the print media is tossing the keys of the city over the wall to the barbarians waiting at the gate.
  I haven’t been too exercised by the big ‘print vs on-line’ debate to date, mainly because I think it’s pointless arguing about the respective quality of the reviews / insights / opinions, especially when so many journalists are bloggers and vice versa. I’m a journalist myself, or at least I review for a variety of traditional media outlets, both print and radio, so when I read a traditional media commentator saying that he / she doesn’t take bloggers seriously, I tend to presume that said commentator hasn’t found the right blogs, is too lazy to go looking, or is afraid to search them out in case their argument falls apart. Either way, I don’t take it too seriously.
  It’s true that many blogs are slapdash and clumsy, and that far too many bloggers put way too much faith in their own opinion, and fail to observe the basic protocols of reviewing, as Lissa Warren notes here at The Huffington Post. But if the number of factual errors in this review of THE BIG O by Publishers Weekly is anything to go by, the traditional media can be every bit as culpable when it comes to being less than rigorous in their reviews.
  Now, I don’t want to pick on the poor unfortunate who got the basic details so badly wrong in Publishers Weekly. PW is not immune to the issues besetting traditional media right now, and it has its own problems at the moment, not least that it is in the process of restructuring. It also reviews a vast quantity of titles per issue. So I can appreciate that these things happen, and the reviewer is as entitled to his or her opinion on THE BIG O as I am when I’m reviewing a book. God knows I’ve dished out my fair share of bad reviews, and I’m not going to whinge when bad karma comes back to bite my metaphorical (albeit perfectly formed) ass.
  But there are a few essential differences between reviews published in traditional media and those on websites and blogs. For starters, when I review for traditional media, my name goes on the review. Furthermore, if I write a review undermined by basic errors in describing the plot, mistakes which then feed into my opinion of the book / play / movie, then the author / director is perfectly entitled to ask for a right-of-reply and / or and a corrections box in a subsequent issue. Beyond that, my editor is perfectly entitled query my substandard work, and issue a warning as to what is and what isn’t unacceptable. These are all basic and essential protocols. Reviewing books and movies isn’t exactly heart surgery, but it does bring with it its own responsibilities, and the reviewer has a duty of care to the author, the editor and the reader.
  The traditional media would argue that these protocols protect and enhance the business of reviewing, in theory at least. In practice, it’s highly unlikely that an author, say, will protest a review based on inaccuracies on the basis that, as with sending back a cold bowl of soup in a restaurant, the fact that it’s warm when it returns may not necessarily be a good thing. No one wants to get a reputation for being ‘difficult’, because it lessens the chances of a good review further down the line, and hugely increases the chances of getting no review at all.
  Blogs and websites, by contrast, are generally more accessible. Reviewing isn’t supposed to be a democratic process, but an author who receives a factually inaccurate review from a blog should have no problem contacting the reviewer, whose contact details are generally available on his or her homepage. And, given that bloggers are usually enthusiasts who are blogging in order to spread the word, and are reviewing for love rather than money, they are generally more amenable to offering corrections and right-to-reply. Of course, they’re often not; that all depends on the blogger in question. Speaking for myself, I can only say that if a writer (or a writer’s supporter) gets in touch with me to argue his or her point, then I am only too delighted to offer them the space to do so. It’s not just a matter of courtesy; it’s the very essence of the peer-to-peer relationship that characterises internet discourse.
  There are other issues differentiating traditional and on-line media, of course. In the context of reviewing books, the traditional media will argue that bloggers are often less stringent in their evaluation of a book than a traditional-media critic might be. I’d agree with this point, although I’d suggest that very few bloggers see themselves as critics, and more as reviewers, whereas traditional media reviewers tend to regard themselves as critics. Only a fool would rush out and buy a book on the strength of a gushingly positive review from a single blogger – or, for that matter, from a traditional media review. But if you read ten, twenty or a 120 positive reviews of a particular book across a range of blogs, you’re more likely to accept the general trend. Only a very few authors, by comparison, are afforded the luxury of that quantity of coverage in the traditional media.
  And that’s without getting into the issue of the ‘long tail’ of the internet versus ‘tomorrow’s garbage’ of the traditional media.
  In a nutshell, book blogs and websites provide information that the traditional media either does not provide, or is tardy in providing – Rob Smith’s CHILD 44, now a Booker Prize nominee but initially championed through the web, being the most recent case in point. Established and best-selling authors are almost guaranteed saturation coverage in traditional media when they publish a new book, but if it’s new, different or awkward voices you prefer, then it’s bloggers who are seeking out and celebrating such voices.
  That’s understandable, as the traditional media has bills to pay and advertisers to woo, while most bloggers operate without any financial constraints at all – or, indeed, any financial incentive. It’s this last, I think, that underpins the traditional media’s paranoia about the web in general and bloggers in particular, and fuels the time-honoured fallacy fostered by capitalism, which is that unless you can pay for it, it’s not worth anything.
  The point that they’re missing, I think, is that no one blog or website sets itself up as a champion of virtue, quality or worth. The blogosphere is something of a Borg entity, or an ant hill, in which all the individual blogs combine and interact. That runs against the grain of the adversarial nature of traditional media, in which each outlet is in competition with every other for a slice of the pie. When I first started blogging, coming from as I did from that adversarial mentality, I was shocked at the hospitality and sense of community, and even now it still has the power to surprise me, albeit pleasantly. It all sounds too hippy-dippy to be true, but true it is – without the support of far too many bloggers and on-line crime fic fans to mention here, the self-published THE BIG O would never have made it into the pages of Publishers Weekly, for good or ill. Happy days, people.