BEING A READER

The Mercedes quality assessment system for books

The things that appeal to me in books fall into three categories. Making each of them an axis at 120 degree angles, and plotting the quality of a book on these three axes creates a triangle, the area of which indicates the overall merit of the book.

That’s the idea, one I had on the bus the other day.

The scale would look like a bit like the Mercedes emblem. (And that’s the full extent of the automotive reference.)

The vertical axis reflects Meaning. This has to do with the insights and ideas in the book. It could also include formal innovation and social commentary. Books that score high on this axis could be called “fascinating”, “deep”, “challenging” or even “life-changing”. These books win literary awards.

The left axis reflects Feeling. This has to do with the emotional appeal of things in the book, e.g. the characters, setting or theme. Books that score high on this axis could be called “engaging”, “charming” or “right up my alley”.  These books travel in backpacks and linger on bedside tables.

The right axis reflects Fun. This has to do with action, tension, the thrust of the plot, humour and the prose itself. Books that score high on this axis could be called “enjoyable”, “thrilling” or “unputdownable”. These books dominate bestseller lists (though seldom because of humour, and never because of the prose).

Now, using a scale where 1 is the lowest possible rating and 5 the highest, let’s plot some books on this scale to see what it might look like, based on my fallible judgement.

The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky (contender for best novel ever)

The Sound of Thunder – Wilbur Smith (which I translated a few years ago)

 

Death’s Dark Abyss – Massimo Carlotto (favourite book I’ve read in recent years)

The Following Story – Cees Nooteboom (probably the book I’ve reread most times)

 

Anyway, you get the idea.

My own books tend to rate higher on the Feeling and Fun axes, rather on the Meaning scale.

 

BEING A READER, Crime books

How to like reading about a hero you don’t like – ‘The Goodbye Kiss’ by Massimo Carlotto

Reading Massimo Carlotto’s crime novel The Goodbye Kiss, I was once again reminded how intriguing an unsympathetic main character can be in fiction.

My own novel No-Brainer features a main character some readers find too hard to like. However, I do ascribe to the accepted truism of writing that the reader should care for the main character and preferably like them enough to root for them. I also wrote elsewhere that one of the reasons I don’t like reading books about serial killers is that I don’t want to spend time with sickos.

So why did I enjoy Carlotto’s book so much when the main character is a lying bastard, robber, serial abuser of women and commits a string of murders?

For one thing, he’s not a sicko. He commits these crimes, but unlike the serial killers I detest, he doesn’t derive particular pleasure from doing so. Although he does confess in one place to always having enjoyed murder, that is not the motivation for his actions. He is simply trying to look after number one the best way he knows how. He is callous and cruel, but not sadistic.

The way the book is written, with its incredibly fast pace, is also not indulgent. You never get the feeling that the narrator is enjoying the gore or is hoping that the reader will get kicks from descriptions of violence. The violence happens, matter of factly, and the story moves on.

Massimo Carlotto reminded me of nobody so much as Jim Thompson, whose main characters can also be morally corrupt. Both these authors write lean and mean fiction… and these words are not just chosen because they rhyme. There is a commendable, merciless quality to the writing of both these men.

I read The Goodbye Kiss without as much as a glance at the blurb. I saw the book at a second hand store, liked the look of it and decided to simply open on page one and start reading. It is only afterwards that I read the blurbs and discovered the degree to which Massimo Carlotto’s life story mirrors that of the protagonist in this book. (Presumably the author is not really a murderer, though he did spend five years in prison before his conviction on a murder charge was overturned.)

While Carlotto’s biography can be considered to lend credence to his work, I believe that’s neither here nor there. What you read in the book is the work of someone with a hard-nosed approach that is clearly not put on. (I’m so bored with narrators who pretend to be tough. Isn’t it far more compelling to read stories, especially crime stories, courageous enough to show vulnerability?)

Interestingly, I also recently read two other books where the main character didn’t entirely win my sympathy: John le Carré’s Absolute Friends and James M. Cain’s Mildred Pierce.

In Le Carré’s case, the character was a victim of larger forces and should’ve evinced more sympathy. Yet somehow he just never came alive to me, despite all the pages and all the information and everything that was done to him. A spark of life was missing. Brilliant writer though he is, I think Le Carré didn’t quite get this character to come off the page.

The title character of Mildred Pierce was more appealing, at least at first, though her actions made one care about her less as the story progressed. Still, it is a marvellous book and one I can almost not believe has been as successful as it has been. It certainly doesn’t follow the popular pattern. It’s actually an incredibly brave book.

And one cannot consider unsympathetic main characters without a nod to Nabokov, whose works feature a succession of them. In his case, the trick is that you recognise the humanity of these characters. You may not admire them, but you feel you know them and, however begrudgingly, are willing to indulge their weaknesses. And, of course, there’s that Nabokov style to make the reading a pleasure.

Which brings me back to Massimo Carlotto’s book. If the writing is good, then the book is a joy to read. As Oscar Wilde said: “There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are either well written or badly written. That is all.”

BEING A READER, Crime books

Jim Thompson’s ‘The Getaway’ shows pulp fiction can be great literature

For much of the 20th Century, being innovative in art was a precondition for recognition, if not sufficient reason in itself. It was certainly the case in visual art. Novels, too, could not escape being judged on their novelty value.

What has come to interest me more than novelty is the possibility of doing something valuable within the canons of well-established art forms.  Can one, for instance, write a book within the constraints of pulp fiction that is also great literature?

In science fiction, the names of Stanislaw Lem and Philip K. Dick spring to mind as authors who may have achieved this. What makes me favour Dick over Lem is that he was never as self-consciously literary as the Polish master. Save for his last few books, Dick always kept the plot moving and the thrills coming while the moral and ethical dramas unfolded.

When one talks of literary crime writing, the name James Sallis tends to come up. While I find this author’s work conceptually appealing, I struggle to like many of the books. I gave up on The Killer is Dying recently because the author refers to various characters as “he” without enough clues as to who “he” is in this chapter, as he uses three or four different focal characters. Maybe that was exactly the point, that the characters were somehow one and the same, but it proved a fatal impediment to my reading pleasure. In the James Sallis books I’ve read, I’ve also failed to discover greatness of intent – the literary ambition seemed to me more technical than profound.

So if I were asked about the greatest literary crime writer, I’d nominate Jim Thompson. While not my favourite crime writer, he has written at least two books in pulp format that transcends the genre beyond any reasonable expectation.

I have written elsewhere that Pop. 1280 gets my vote for greatest pulp crime novel of all. But The Getaway might be an even greater literary achievement. Here is a story about two armed robbers running from the law that goes through a wormhole to emerge as a deeply symbolic, quite surreal, morality tale.

What makes this achievement doubly impressive is that page for page the book reads like pulp fiction – the author never sacrifices entertainment value for the sake of significance.

Doing this – giving readers a profound experience while rewarding them all along with spicy snacks – strikes me as a greater achievement than giving readers a profound experience they feel like they’re working for.