Reading between the whines.

Recently David Brooks wrote a column for the New York Times titled, “When Novels Mattered”, where he lamented the decline in popularity of literary works. His premise was that the gatekeepers – editors and publishers – had so narrowed their selection process that general fiction had begun to cleave to an orthodox, predictable style and subject matter. That the bold literary enterprises of the past, not that long ago, have been replaced by a shrinking sea of sameness and rigid conformity to socially acceptable pre-occupations.

Saul Bellow

The change, in his mind, began with a shift in the center of gravity from Greenwich Village (a metaphor, I think, for private intellectual and artistic culture) to University MFA programs. Implicit in this is the notion that the narrow, elitist political orientation of the faculty lounge has taken over the literary arts. https://tinyurl.com/3fsu2m6k

I haven’t read much contemporary general fiction in recent years, so I can’t confirm this through my own experience, though maybe that supports his thesis. I confess that I’ve stopped reading short stories in The New Yorker, after realizing they all sounded the same, and mirroring the prevailing content of recent novels, deal with matters of little relevance to my own life, which I’m not spending in disaffected, over-educated warrens in Brooklyn and select neighborhoods of Manhattan.

It’s probably true that the publishing world has little interest in being relevant to me, one of the old, straight, suburban white males who have apparently given up on the novel form. Businesses follow the market, as they should. It’s a classic chicken/egg dilemma. So I've likely aged out of the culture. Though, since David Brooks, who's paid to be a social commentator, has noticed the same thing I have, maybe it's worth a closer look.

My research into this extends to occasional first-page scanning of books off the bestseller tables. I’m sure I’d discover some very nice composition if I’d had it in me to plow through a few chapters, but I was usually deterred by the flap copy and back cover commentary. My reading budget being what it is, I’d rather spend it on Shawn Cosby and Gillian Flynn.

I did have an urge, promptly squelched as impossibly Quixotic, to write to Mr. Brooks and suggest he take a look at the recent output of mystery and thriller writers, whose books and short stories are wildly creative and diverse, and blessedly unencumbered by slack-jawed conversation and self-obsessed ennui. Many of these books are selling quite nicely, thank you.

Patricia Highsmith

If he responds that these aren’t the sort of literary works he’s addressing, but rather genre fiction, I would happily mount my exhausted hobby horse and declare there is little or no difference between a finely written crime novel and a literary novel that includes a bit of crime (e.g. The Talented Mr. Ripley and The Great Gatsby.)

My friend Reed Coleman gave me permission to repeat something he once said on a panel. When asked to differentiate literary novels from mysteries, he said, “Books without plots.” Reed’s a very erudite man, widely read, but I get his point. While many fine literary works are well-plotted, they often get away with none at all. This is not true with a mystery. It can be heavily character driven, with a familiar story line, but it has to have a plot, usually a very clever one.

Plots are really hard, but it’s our responsibility to provide the best we can for our readers. And without this, we mystery writers would never get past an agent, much less a publisher. Having spent the last twenty years plying the mystery trade, I just don't read anything that doesn’t have a good story – a narrative arc, with something meaningful at the end. It feels like modern fiction is much less concerned with this task than with swirling examinations of the characters and present-day zeitgeist, fine dissections of mood, emotional conflict and social ramifications. Okay, but not for me.

I’ve lately been pleasantly engaged by Mick Herron’s Slow Horses series, which manages atmospheric narrative, character development and challenging plot intricacies as adroitly as any MFA professor could ever hope to emulate. His style ignores the editorial bias toward clipped, clean language, and takes a more arch and entirely British approach to leisurely, but ever-compelling description, with pacing to match. (He obviously never benefitted from American editors and pundits who coach crime writers to “get right in there from page one and grab ‘em by the throat!”)

This tells me that you can enjoy beautifully crafted prose delivered with slicing wit and detailed description, and also get a fun story in the bargain. You just have to meander around the crime fiction aisle at the bookstore or your local library.

Joseph Heller

I was an undergraduate English major, and have an MFA in Creative Writing, as it turns out. I’m not aware of the syllabi of those now similarly incarcerated, but in my day (listen up, whippersnappers), the reading lists were all over the place. I read everything David Brooks notes as the meaty Great Novels of our shared past, and then some. I read an awful lot of books, and cared not a wit which genre or calendar period they fell into. This is one reason I give myself a pass on bulking up even more at this late date. But I still feel a little bad that I’ve forsaken something that meant so much to me when I was younger and more gluttonous, gobbling up anything that was printed and stuffed between two covers. Now I know as much about contemporary fiction as I do the music of recent Grammy nominees, which is dangerously close to zero.

With one exception. Amor Towles is as good as anyone ever. If you know of any authors who might compare, please let me know.