Book Notes — Faraway Places

I want to thank the person who came up with the concept of “crime fiction.”  I’ve always thought that the term“mysteries” was misleading for many books in which there was no mystery, but where crime was central to the story. Now if someone would clear up “literary” crime fiction.

Author Tom Spanbauer

I traipsed around the Internet to find some sort of definition from dictionaries to book discussion groups.  What I found was more confusion. Even so, the term continues to be bandied about by reviewers and readers. During a recent interview with Omnimystery News, James Lee Burke said, “I try to write a book or short story that has literary merit.”  I’m not sure what that means either, though I would imagine that if any of the more popular crime writers fall in the so-called literary category Burke would be one of them.

I don’t believe there is a definition on which we can all agree.  Perhaps it is similar to what has been said about obscenity.  We can’t define it, but we think we know it when we see it. Again, if there is “literary" crime fiction, Faraway Places qualifies.

I suspect that author Tom Spanbauer neither intended to write nor would he now consider his first book, Faraway Places, a literary crime novel or a crime novel at all. Certainly none of the rest of his highly regarded novels has a crime as a central plot point. But this one does, and I believe the powerful story would appeal to many crime fiction readers, especially those who seek a high-quality, out-of-the ordinary read.

Thirteen-year-old Jake Weber lives in an isolated area in the remote state of Idaho. He is a sensitive boy.  Every sensor in his adolescent being is working over time. His mind and pen register the smell of the river when it is full and flowing and the scent of the river when it is shallow and unmoving.  He is aware of the feeling of the wind, the movement of the clouds, the flight of the birds and the sound everything makes.

That place up there in the stand of twenty-two cottonwood trees smelled like the wind  — a hot smell full of dry June grass and sagebrush and big round crusty cow pies and horse turds all mixed ….  Under those trees that sound the leaves made made you feel like you were having secrets whispered to you, and I whispered secrets back — like my secret name that I said aloud there.

One hot summer day and against standing orders from his emotionally distant father, Jake goes for a swim. He witnesses a brutal murder, as brutal as I’ve ever read.   This is only the beginning, however. Secrets are exposed. Nature, human and the rest of it, will have its way. It was particularly grotesque as murder stories go, a hellish epiphany, and a particularly rough rite of passage for young Jake out there in the middle of nowhere, where a crime like this could easily go unnoticed.

Opinion — Allende Opens Old Wounds: Literary vs. Genre

Isabel Allende and her mystery-writing husband,
William C. Gordon (photo by Lori Barra)

In light of the buzz storm caused by “literary” luminary Isabel Allende and her apparent disdain for crime fiction, it might be time to ask why we care. Is it because she finally wrote one and is using her “literary credentials to sell it? “She also apologizes as if it is some sort of guilty displeasure approached in much the same way a 4-star chef might approach an assignment to boil hot dogs. So frightened she is of feeling merely mortal, Allende now claims she her new book was intended to be a parody of crime fiction. Someone forgot to tell The New York Times, who reviewed it as if it were the real thing. The whole idea she would parody the very kind of fiction she never reads adds a new dimension to her reputation as a “magic realist.”

It’s all right for writers laden with literary awards, Allende included, to undertake what some would categorize as crime fiction. Many have and many have done well. My view is everyone is welcome. If it works, it works.  The proof, however, isn’t in the name or reputation — it’s in the reading.

The following post, comments for new crime  writers who worry about being considered second class is taken from a post that first appeared here in June 2011:

“Because you are a mystery writer, does that mean you are only sort of a writer? I once attended a Private Eye Writers of America annual get-together. In the course of leaving the buffet area, plate in hand, I was invited to sit down with a couple of writers I knew of, more than I knew. They were both seriously credentialed, talented veterans of the genre. Though I suspect I was actually older, I felt a bit junior in their company.

“At some point, one of them asked why I decided to write mysteries. Not particularly used to using words without a keyboard at the tip of my fingers and the ability to edit as I go, I responded by saying: “Because I couldn’t write….” Before I could find the next word, they were laughing. What I had implied, having gone momentarily adrift mentally, was that I believed it took no writing talent to create mysteries — that it is something we do because we cannot write “literary” fiction. Just so it isn’t left there, the rest of the explanation, probably unheard because of the laughter, was that my attempts to write other kinds of novels had been difficult because with so much freedom in the form I wandered about on all sorts of tangents (as I am now). Without some discipline I could write forever but complete nothing. I found that having some rules helped me write. My initial foray into mysteries was to submit to the St. Martin’s Best First Novel Competition. This gave me some guidance and a form. So many words, completed by such and such a date — specific goals. Also, inherent in mysteries, there are expectations, such as creating and solving a puzzle, which is what most novelists do, anyway, “literary” or otherwise.  Also, I liked crime fiction.

“However, despite my long tangent, the point is relatively simple — there is no such thing as a literary novel as a separate art form from the mystery or science fiction novel or any other form. There are books that seem to transcend what preceded them, that take us to new places, show us new things, allow us to think in new ways.

‘Some are so good they will be read for the next thousand years. Many will be acknowledged as “game changers.” Most not. The good ones might even involve a murder or two, or a trip to another galaxy.

Odds are that you and I are not going to create that kind of classic. But it doesn’t mean we are not writers and that we cannot aspire to that goal. And it means that if we truly want to write, and we keep our minds open, we can learn from, but will not be held hostage by, all the noise that surrounds us — including fine writers who occasionally sound like self-inflating Divas.