Number Two: Chris Rhatigan and Pablo D'Stair:

Three dialogues on literature

By Pablo D'Stair

[Part one]

NOTE: This dialogue is presented over the next four weeks in a style of "progressive fragments." The exact order of inquiry and response as presented is not the order of inquiry and response as it happened between the two dialogue partners. Therefore, 'Statements' and 'Responses' from one week may not be directly addressed by both parties until subsequent weeks.

It is the hope of both parties that the spaces between these responses allow readers the time and opportunity to more fully and experientially engage with the propositions, for themselves, rather than looking at the dialogue as a closed circuit.

CHRIS RHATIGAN: I consider what I do genre writing. Mostly crime writing with some weird fiction/horror mixed in.

I'm useless at defining what genre fiction is, but I figure that most of my work has some element of crime mixed in, therefore, it's crime fiction. I see myself as part of a tradition, as building off of a foundation laid by both old and new crime writers.

Genre writers

You're right about literary writers and genre writers taking shots at each other and certainly I've participated in that. But we fight with each other to put off, you know, actually writing, and because we don't understand each other. Genre people get too focused on plot (myself included); literary people focus too much on character and language.

Maybe it just comes down to taste. I genuinely enjoy most of the genre fiction I read -- but with literary fiction, I enjoy very little of it. I'm easily bored and care little for flowery prose, so the backbone of story in genre fiction is what keeps me involved.

PABLO D'STAIR:Though you bring up a few things I could pleasantly delve into, what I most want to have you go on about is your personal impression of "literary fiction." I appreciate and understand you are not into the defining of genre etc. but it is evident from your response that you do delineate it, even in a "party lines" way.

You say what I hear a lot (especially from "genre" writers) regarding literary-that it is "flowery" or "focuses more on language and character." Could you, in some detail, however you take the question, explain what you mean by 'flowery' and why this has so been tagged by you (and others) as representative of literary?

Literary writers

I add, just for context, that being a literary writer myself, I find it peculiar when I hear that-most of the literature I can think of is stripped down, is, while evocative, sure, and sometimes (sometimes) lengthy, never so particularly "purple." On the flip, a lot of the problems I find with hard-and-fast genre is that it is, indeed, so verbose and unnecessarily descriptive and plodding, like for every "plot event" an excessive amount of empty prose is set in-literary fiction seems to do away with the excess, first.

Understand, this is not me arguing, I just wanted to, for the sake of context, share an honest assessment of my own, since I would very much like to know your thoughts.

So, "flowery" is what?

CR: Most good crime fiction to me sounds like talk or (if you're James Ellroy) machine gun fire. Most literary fiction sounds like writing.

I haven't read a ton of modern literary fiction, but two examples of writers who I think represent the worst on that side of things are Joyce Carol Oates and John Updike. I read a collection of Updike's stories a few years ago. Most of them were about middle-aged men and women who were bored and had affairs. While there were "events" in any given story, it felt to me like nothing of interest ever occurred. Clearly Updike is capable of writing pretty-sounding sentences, but I found his stories unmemorable.

I have many similar complaints about Oates' work. A recent collection of her stories was called, Give Me Your Heart: Tales of Mystery and Suspense. I read a handful of stories and none of them contained any mystery or suspense. For example, the title story is around 40 pages long and painfully slow. She seems extremely concerned with getting her main character's voice right-so concerned that she rambles on and on. Like Updike, she writes elegant prose, but it lacks the punch that crime writing possesses.

Fiction

I would even say this about literary fiction that I like. I adored Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep, but it's 400 pages about a girl who goes to prep school, has a crush on a guy, and then doesn't end up with him. Very little happens.

Now, when you say that genre is "so verbose and unnecessarily descriptive and plodding, like for every 'plot event' an excessive amount of empty prose is set in," I'm not really sure what you're talking about. I mean, of course, in crime you're going to have to take some time to describe, say, a gun fight, whereas in literary fiction you might take the same amount of time to talk about how you've realized your mother secretly doesn't like your sweater, and how you think that means she secretly doesn't like you too.

PD:Well, we'll set to one side the more ethereal and forever round and round Literary versus Genre thing, otherwise I think we'd get sidetracked too much from more valuable points.

What I do find striking is that you say that crime fiction "sounds like talk" while most literary "sounds like writing." I could not feel more the opposite, based both on experience and observation. Indulge me for a moment, just while I flesh out my point:

First, most directly, I will flatly say that crime writing (most "genre" fiction, but especially crime fiction) sound less like talking to me than anything else I've come across, whether in book form, film form, anything. I mean both in terms of the prose itself and in the way actual dialogue-dialogue tends to be presented in it.

To my way of thinking, an identifying trait of crime/genre fiction is a highly stylised voice and way of having characters interact, mannerism upon mannerism not based, mostly, on life observation but on "making it slick," so to speak. I say this in no disparaging way, not at all. But the typical narrative voice and depiction of interaction in crime fiction seems largely based in mythos, in "stylised versions of style, itself"-even when the talk is meant to seem gritty or "everyday," it is so honed and cleaned and particularised it's kind of silly to say it smacks of reality.

The narrative voice, especially, never takes a tone of any storytelling (talk) I have witnessed or personally encountered in life, other. Nobody really talks the way a crime novel is written, and the better the crime novel (usually) the less it sounds like anything real, anything but itself

A writer who has produced mostly "highly literary" work (much of which, I point out to you, I don't think you are familiar with) and one who reads a lot of it, I find one of largest complaints against much of it is that it isn't "written enough".

Whenever I, in my writing, take a point to follow the actual dictates of naturalistic storytelling or rendering of speech (especially dialogue) there is always a commentary of "this is just rambling, this is stream-of-consciousness, this is just like someone talking" and a lot of such comments, both towards my work and in reference to literary work I have also read, come from folks who prefer a style more akin to crime/genre writing-that is they want it stylised, gotten-to-the point, not "like someone really thinks or talks."

Crime writing

I think you'd have to agree that in most crime writing one happens across, everything written from the point of view of narrator and certainly in the form of dialogue is meant to tick things along, be smoothed out, polished, "snappy" "sharp" "quick and hard" "move the story along" etc etc. This is not like talking, this is not close to any reality one experiences and, in fact, I would think it safe to say the allure in crime/genre fiction to a lot of readers is that it is highly unrealistic and nothing to do with sounding like talking.

A long set-up and not meant as a bully-pulpit, I just find that the comments you make are made by a lot of people and kind of, to me, speak to a particularised disconnect from interfacing with things that actually Do try to express in common terms, in natural terms-so much of a disconnect, really, that the two things have switched positions, that people like to refer to things distinctly "unreal" as "real" and things "distinctly real" as "pointless" or "boring" or even "not real."

Thoughts?

CR: When I say "crime writing sounds like talk," I don't mean "crime fiction sounds like conversation." What I mean is that crime fiction reads like someone is talking to me. Not that I'm overhearing a conversation, but that a story is being read to me.

Yes, crime is often very stylised. Yes, crime is intended to move the story along, which is not at all how people talk to one another. But when I read good crime fiction, I'm not aware of the act of reading. It sounds like someone talking to me. I can't say the same thing for Henry James or Flannery O'Connor (two authors who I really like), or Oates or Updike.

Take this random piece I found at Barrelhouse. (This was the first publication that I thought of. Seems like most literary folks like it.) Here's a line from a story about a couple checking into a hotel that is booked for the night: "What about a suite, we say, and the man lets out a long sigh and rechecks his computer and then he mumbles something about the honeymoon suite and I say we'll take it, even though you never officially asked me to marry you and I never officially declined."

That line demands to be read twice (or at least be thought about for a second or two) because of the clever, cutesy business at the end about him never asking to marry her and her never officially declining. That takes me out of the moment, makes me aware that I'm reading something written. (Also, does that line really sound like stream of consciousness to you? Doesn't that sound thought out?)

Reality

As far as the end of your question, I have never claimed that crime fiction is "real," nor would I care if it was or wasn't. In fact, I frequently go out of my way in my own writing to disconnect from reality. I'm not the kind of writer (or reader, for that matter) who picks apart stories because the caliber of a gun isn't right or any of that kind of nonsense. I've gotten into the habit now of just writing "gun" and nothing else. I don't think crime fiction is like real life whatsoever.

As far as "boring," I can't imagine how you would argue that literary fiction is more exciting than crime. The Barrelhouse story I referenced above is about an on-again, off-again relationship between two rich people.

Another story I read recently-which won some big literary award-the first two pages were about different people who came into a coffee shop the main character worked at. Didn't even get to the conflict for two entire pages. Do you really think that's more exciting than murders, robberies? Whether or not you want excitement out of what you read is an entirely different question.

***

CR:Absolutely, audience factors in writing, but in a narrow way. When editing and writing, I think, "Would I like to read this?" And I only keep the material that I would want to read. It's funny that I'm writing for a reader who doesn't really exist... On the other hand, I know there are some folks out there with similar tastes and I want to offer them a worthwhile experience.

And let's face it -- if I didn't care about audience, you wouldn't know about me and I wouldn't be doing this interview. I don't really care about making money at writing, but I do want people to read my stuff and enjoy it. So I write stories that get right to the heart of things. That's why I love flash and micro fiction -- when done right, it's the most concentrated form of entertainment.

PD:Isn't everyone, truly, writing for "a reader who doesn't exist"? For "audience" in abstracto-I mean, even if you write for "other people who like crime fiction" that is a dauntingly vast and complex set of readers.

I dig that you ask "would I like to read this?" (a bit curious, but I've had, I think, a similar mindset go into my work if I'm honest-as opposed, let me clarify, asking myself "do I want to write this?") but wonder how this bumps against the notion of "worthwhile" for another party? How do you delineate, loosely or concretely, what you mean there? You mean against a set of particular peers, I'm supposing, but is it more than that?

Entertainment

I've been on record, elsewhere, about some of my conflicted thoughts about micro, flash. though have always said in the purely narrative, entertainment sense I dig them. Considering the length and "entertainment" aim of you work (as you say, I actually have a different opinion of your stuff we will touch on later) do you, in honesty, take audience reaction into account so much? It has to be admitted that if a piece is a blunt, quick (some would say "toss-away") thing that, while it might be good, it is no more that it's brief pop.

I feel that way about short work I've done (say the recent work for the Out of Bullets contest)-glad if someone likes it, but if they don't, what do I care, it's just a little riff.

Thoughts on this?

CR: That's probably why I have only written short stories and flash so far-it's low risk, as you said, and if someone doesn't like it (or, for that matter, you, the writer, don't like it), you can just move on.

Most of the time I'm writing with a particular publication in my mind. Yes, I want it to be something that would appeal to me as a reader, but I also want it to appeal to a specific person: an editor. Ideally, I would publish everything I write, and it would get out to the small audience that enjoys the kind of thing I write. The reality, of course, is different.

I do have the luxury (or curse?) of not caring whether or not I make money at writing. I fully expect to continue to have a day job and pay the bills with that. This is good because, while I dig commercial fiction, it's not really what I want to write. I fit in better with the noir crowd, where I don't have to be concerned about writing a likable main character or constructing an interesting puzzle to solve.