People ask me
what I write. I have to say something, so I tell people I write detective
fiction. This means very little. Detective fiction is most fiction; it covers
everything from Genesis (who killed Abel?) to CRIME & PUNISHMENT (go
Detective Porfiry!) to that fat paperback you picked up at the airport. But it
still means something: genre is a joyous and beautiful set of rules,
boundaries, formulas, and tropes. Everyone knows a murder mystery will be
solved. Everyone knows the prime suspect didn't do it. A private eye with a
bottle of whiskey in his hand is an image that has become a symbol: it tells a
story to people. We know this man and we know his history: tough, bitter,
hard-drinking, solves cases, easy prey for a certain type of woman. In this
way, genre can be seen as a kind of language, and we can think of the tropes of
genre as words. If you put a whiskey-drinking PI on a page with a woman in a
tight red dress, you know what you're reading, and it's something like noir.
The joy in
writing genre fiction is in the privilege of using this language. Once we see a
scary little girl in a white dress and long hair, we all pretty much know where
this story is going, and it ain't toward a happy ending. Imagine if every time
you wanted to use the word "chair" you had to, instead, explain what
a chair was and what it did. Genre gives us a series of building blocks to
build a story without having to start from scratch every time.
If we use these
building blocks exactly as they've been used before, we might end up with
something smart and cool and fun, but we probably won't make anyone think twice
if we give them exactly what they expect. Sometimes that's a good thing.
Sometimes we need a fucking break. Sometimes we need to enter a story and know
it's going to play by the rules and take us exactly where we expect -- maybe
because the rest of life never seems to play by the rules, and we can never
know what to expect at all.
But the other
joy in writing genre fiction is taking those boundaries and formulas and tropes
and fucking them all up. Language is so wonderful when we use it as expected.
Maybe it's even more wonderful when we use it in unexpected ways. For example,
put together the word "chair" with something you haven't seen before.
Maybe "apple." Now you've got something to think about. What's an
apple chair? Or is it a chair apple? Or is it a chair with an apple on top? Hey
now, what if it's an apple with a tiny chair on top? And a mouse lives there?
See, here we are, already thinking and creating and making something new.
The Infinite
Blacktop by Sara Gran (published by Faber & Faber)
Driven off the
desert road and left for dead, Claire DeWitt knows that it is someone from her
past trying to kill her, she just doesn't know who. Making a break for it from
the cops who arrive on the scene, she sets off in search of the truth, or
whatever version of it she can find. But perhaps the biggest mystery of all
lies deeper than that, somewhere out there on the ever rolling highway of life.
Set between modern day Las Vegas and LA, The Infinite Blacktop sees Claire at
her lowest point yet, wounded and disorientated, but just about hanging on. Too
smart for her own good, too damaged to play by the rules, too crazy for most -
have you got what it takes to follow the self-appointed 'best detective in the
world'?
More information about the author and her books can be found on her website.
No comments:
Post a Comment