The Language of Defeat and a challenge
After Banville-gate I pointed a number of people (publicly and privately) towards an essay that Jeff VanderMeer wrote a couple of years back called The Language of Defeat.
I have heard, more times than I care to admit, what I call the language of defeat. I’ve heard it on panels and on blogs, at genre conventions, at books festivals, and at academic conferences over the past decade.
This language of defeat has to do with accepting a paradigm of the fiction world as “us” versus “them”, of “mainstream” versus “genre.” I use quote marks around “genre” and “mainstream” because I do not believe these terms are as monolithic or as meaningful in practice as we think of them in theory. The “mainstream” and “genre,” if we must subdivide in this way, are both various, rich, and fecund traditions, with many strands and diverse lineages. (In many cases, the two intertwine in such an incestuous way that separating them from each other is a job for a trained genealogist.)
In most cases using this kind of language leads to a bemoaning of the lack of acceptance by the “literary mainstream.” It also leads to a certain resentment on the part of “genre” writers, especially centered on the idea that some “mainstream” writers get away with writing “genre” books. We’ve seen this attitude a lot lately—focused on writers like Margaret Atwood for her Oryx & Crake, Jeanette Winterson for The Stone Gods, Cormac McCarthy to lesser extent for The Road, and even the work of Jonathan Lethem in a general way, once accused of abandoning his “genre” roots. The negative attitudes toward these books and authors have three layers or premises: (1) that it is somehow inherently wrong and rude for these writers to write in what is so clearly a “genre” milieu (without asking first?), (2) that these authors’ cliché comments disavowing their books as “Science Fiction” or “Fantasy” somehow reflect negatively on the quality of the actual texts, and (3) that these forays into forbidden territory are written with no regard for or knowledge of “genre” predecessors.
All of these assumptions tie into the language of defeat because they constitute a kind of wall or barrier in people’s minds to acceptance of the work as it exists on the page. And what I mean about this being the language of defeat is that it pre-loads any discussion to appear self-pitying and shrill, overloaded with envy. It also severs the link of responsibility, in that we are no longer talking about individuals or individual institutions, individual gatekeepers, but instead a shadowy them—an enemy without a face, as amorphous as mist.
This language of defeat also requires participants to wade through decades of grudges, jealousies, and insecurities passed down through the generations in the form of received ideas, anecdotes, and assumptions that constitute genre’s least useful heirloom.
In fiction, received ideas (which manifest as cliché) are death, but we seem unable to think except in terms of generalizations when it comes to the frustrations and concerns of the writing life. It is much easier to take on the language and ideas of the supposed oppressor and exist in a world where our failures are someone else’s fault, and where if only the roadblocks were removed, the ivory towers razed, the truculent, generic, nameless gatekeepers executed, and their heads put on spikes, everyone would get their proper due.
This then is the language of defeat, the acceptance of one’s status as victim whilst mouthing the words of dead people from panels past—even being willing to channel the syntax of our defeat, as if we were all pessimistic travelers from the past.
Go read the whole thing it’s well worth your time.
At the end of the essay VanderMeer offers up Ten Books for “Mainstream” Readers and Ten Books for “Genre” Readers.
So, here is the challenge. What mystery/crime books would you recommend to a friend who doesn’t read “genre” and what “non-genre” books would you recommend to a mystery/crime fic reader.
August 13th, 2009 at 9:48 am
DOPE by Sara Gran, definitely.
August 13th, 2009 at 9:52 am
mystery/crime books for a friend who doesn’t read “genre”:
Hostage ~ Robert Crais
Eye Of The Needle ~ Ken Follett
The Silence Of The Lambs ~ Thomas Harris
Smilla’s Sense of Snow ~ Peter Hoeg
Freaky Deaky ~ Elmore Leonard
Killshot ~ Elmore Leonard
“non-genre” books for a mystery/crime fic reader:
London Fields ~ Martin Amis
Leviathan ~ Paul Auster
Talk Talk ~ T C Boyle
A Trip to the Stars ~ Nicholas Christopher
The Name Of The Rose ~ Umberto Eco
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time ~ Mark Haddon
The Thanatos Syndrome ~ Walker Percy
The Club Dumas ~ Arturo Pérez-Reverte
Green River Rising ~ Tim Willocks
August 13th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
August 13th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Crime fiction for those who don’t read it?
– any of the later Robert Crais. I liked the early stuff, too, but his writing improved a great deal as time passed.
– maybe some John D. MacDonald
– Jack Higgins = politics, intrigue, Zippo lighters, gunplay, standing in the rain by a Judas gate with your hand on a Walther wondering what the hell it all means
– Dick Francis for a gentler introduction to crime
– Declan Hughes for a Quentin Tarantino style look at The Life in Dublin
For the crime reader who wants to branch out:
– Bleak House = Dickens threw everything in here, including plenty of mystery, murder, and a cool detective
– Edna Buchanan’s non fiction coverage of crime
– William Gibson’s Spook Country, and Pattern Recognition. Transcends labels.
– Alexander Dumas
– Edgar Allan Poe
– H.P. Lovecraft
August 13th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
I’ve got fairly eclectic tastes but have not yet learned to enjoy much mystery/crime fiction, though I keep trying because I enjoy many mystery/crime movies and TV shows and have a fairly dark view of life, the universe, and everything. But I’ve completely failed to get the attraction of, for instance, Hammett’s Red Harvest, Ross MacDonald’s The Chill, various Chandler, P.D. James, more recent stuff such as Michael Connelly, more “literary” crime novels such as Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories. No luck. Recently, I tried Derek Raymond on Jeff VanderMeer’s recommendation, and actually loathed it all for multiple reasons (there’s a kind of sentimentalism about brutality and vigilantism in such books that strikes me as pathetic and immorally simplifying in its representation of the world, but there’s also something to be said for a book making you hate it so much you end up feeling passionately about it).
So the few mystery/crime novels that have really worked for me may, in fact, be good ones to use as gateway books for less ornery readers than I — and those would be Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley novels, Jim Thompson’s The Getaway and Pop. 1280 (tho preferred the movie version, Coup de Torchon, an astounding film) (not The Killer Inside Me — I started with that and almost didn’t pick up another Thompson novel, because it had been touted to me as his best and I just thought it was silly and obvious), Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon (one of the great novels of the 20th century, methinks), and The Far Cry by Fredric Brown.
Before reading The Far Cry (on Brian Evenson’s recommendation, I think), I had only read Brown’s science fiction. I enjoyed the SF, but thought most of it, including What Mad Universe, one of his most famous novels, was more clever than compelling. Cleverness and the apparent desire to tie up all loose ends ruins the last section of The Far Cry, but up until then it is a deeply unsettling and impressive novel, brilliantly paced and sometimes beautifully written.
As for the other side — not-specifically-crime/mystery for the crime/mystery reader — I’m probably the worst person to judge, but that’s never stopped me before, so I would suggest Paul Bowles’s The Delicate Prey, an extraordinary collection of short stories.
August 14th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
I love Sara Gran — I hope she doesn’t stay away too long.
It’s interesting to see Robert Crais come up twice since I haven’t met a book of his that I’ve liked yet.
Matt — I love that you say you haven’t learned to enjoy it yet — that’s a great outlook. I remember you liking Money Shot by Christa Faust and I wonder if you would like Val McDirmid’s books. Just a thought really.