Way to go

Genre or category fiction is looked upon by its fans and to a degree by air travelers as a necessity, by many teachers as a necessary evil, and by literary writers as "that other stuff." Never mind that some established literary writers pseudonym their way into genre fiction, writing as it were from the closet, while others still jump right in with full frontal nudity. Joyce Carol Oates comes particularly to mind in this context, but A(ntonia). S. Byatt has also broken forth; so too have Cynthia Ozick, John Updyke, John Gregory Dune, Wilfrid Sheed, John Steinbeck, to name a few.

The overwhelming choice in category is the mystery, in some small part because of the long held belief that life is a mystery, but also because the format of the mystery, whether police procedural or private investigator or the more Hitchcockian innocent man/woman whom no one will believe, caught up in the eye of a crime storm, having to prove innocence without help. Well enough; the better mystery (say Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time, or Ross Macdonald's The Underground Man) are in construction a splendid template for a longform narrative, any longform narrative.

Look at the elements. A crime has been committed. Some individual or team of individuals is set forth to discover who the perpetrator(s) is (are), attempt to bring them to justice, encounter reversal, then through persistence and ingenuity solve the puzzle of the crime, effect some satisfactory resolution. In a lovely bit of irony, Aristotle, in his Poetics, described the mystery novel even before it was invented (and brought to such a timeless finish by the likes of Wilkie Collins in The Moonstone and The Woman in White, just as in hos own way, Nathaniel Hawthorne could be argued to have not only "invented" the short story but solidified its form for some time to come when his Twice Told Tales inspired Poe to write his famous review of it which in turn described what a short story should do.

A mystery novel, broken into its component parts, is a series of interviews conducted by the protagonist force. All who may have seen or had involvement in the crime are questioned, their stories matched. Via subtext, the interviewee may reveal hidden agendas or other relevant clues.

The concatenation of events in a literary novel may be reduced to the equation, Something happens and somebody changes, a clear link between it and the mystery format. Of course each narrative, literary and mystery, has interstitial materials, narrative equivalents of the musical soloist's arpeggio or riff. Were you to deconstruct any given literary novel, say Henry James's The Ambassadors, simply because it happened to pop into my mind, and compare that deconstruction with a mystery novel, say Raymond Chandler's creditable The Little Sister, you'd find a theme of a protagonist set out on a quest. In the James, a character is enlisted in a mission to travel to Europe, seek the son of the "client," and urge him to return to America to join and ultimately run the family business. In the Chandler, a private investigator is retained by a client to find a missing relative.

There are delicious layers of irony, reversal, temptation, false leads, discoveries, and moral choices in each story. In each one, the principal player becomes compromised to a larger sense of human accountability.

In addition to the mysteries mentioned, the following have helpful information for writers: Frobisher's Savage by Leonard Tourney, (a mystery set in Elizabethan England), The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, Ride the Pink Horse by Dorothy B. Hughes, any Inspector Wexford mystery by Ruth Rendell, Slip of the Knife by Denise Mina.

Not to forget, however, the so-called Alternate Universe novel, a splendid sub-genre of fantasy. Perhaps the most notable of all AU stories is Alice in Wonderland, wherein a young girl is "transported" to another universe through the portal of a rabbit hole. Dorothy Gale is literally transported from Kansas to Oz via the portal or funnel of a cyclone. The AU novel reminds those of us who persist in telling stories that our own vision is seen differently by others, by readers, for instance. There are parallel as well as alternating universes, occupying portions of the present reality, but having slight differences in outcome and the stakes of the game.

I will not soon forget a young woman I've watched grow up in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, series of AU novels, beginning with The Golden Compass, which has its start at a university (Oxford) and is almost like the current Oxford except for the presence of Jordan College, which does not exist in my Oxford (or yours either) but does that stop me from being caught up in the world of Lyra Belacqua? Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time is yet another AU novel in which characters are sent through a portal to another world to assist in tasks where there are risks, stakes, and satisfying results. If Wrinkle is your wrinkle, you'll be pleased to know that there are satisfying sequels.

If I were to set a novel in some agreeable (in the provocative, literary sense) city, it would be an alternate universe to your city, your Los Angeles or San Francisco or Austin or Portland, allowing you to experience and re-experience your city through my vision. What fun to write a novel about Los Angeles in which none of the characters had anything to do with the entertainment industry, or of San Francisco without a mention of the corkscrew of Lombard or Coit Tower. In Austin, I might very well invent a street crossing Ed Bluestein Blvd, just above or below the intersect with MLK, a street named after, well, Lowenkopf Rd. And right next to Jake's in Portland, or perhaps next to Powell's Books, a small taco stand. And wait till you see what I'd do with Salmon Street in the Mt. Tabor neighborhood.

The mystery and the alternate universe, both better role models or paradigms to have downloaded on the hard drive of our writer memory than any formula or outline, both signposts to guide us as we look for things, clues, suspects, solutions, in the landscape of our imaginative self. Or is that selves?

Golden Bloody Oldie

The title suggests I've been co-opted by British colloquial use, wanting to make a pointed emphasis, but this is about a crime, a bloody crime, and I come to this entry having just done a review of a book about it.

January, 1947. South central Los Angeles, in the residential section near the massive sports arena constructed for the 1932 Olympic Games, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the discovery of the grizzly remains of Elizabeth Short, aka The Black Dahlia.

In my weekly review column for the Montecito Journal, I'm alternating a current release with something published in the past, having at one point reached all the way back to Gilgamesh (although in a modern, poetic rendition) and slipped in one of my favorites, Humphrey Clinker, from the eighteenth century.

This week, the subject was what I consider John Gregory Dunne at the top of his form, True Confessions, a fictionalized version of the famed, unsolved Black Dahlia case.

The Black Dahlia case was one of the first cases an LAPD cop by the name of John St. John was assigned to. Turns out nobody did well on that case, but St. John cracked some of the big LA cases, including the notorious Hillside Strangler, and became a legend in law enforcement. I met him when a student of mine tracked him down and persuaded him to collaborate with her on a book about his career. The chemistry between them was incredible: This tough, no-nonsense Irish cop finds a friendship and purpose with the wife of a small-town doctor. I got in on many a ride, including one where St. John gave me a tour of LA "dump sites," places where grotesquely mutilated bodies had been discovered. I developed a fondness for a less grotesque kind of butchery, the steak sandwich at Taylor's Steak House on Eight Street, that and a Molly Salad, which was a quarter of a tightly packed iceberg lettuce, doused with a dressing of cheese, diced onions, and tomatoes.

True Confessions used a fictional version of The Black Dahlia case, setting it against two brothers, a cop who was as gritty (but not as honorable) as St. John, and his brother, the monseigneur, each on the make in his career, tied to the case by a gritty political inevitability. The payoff is a lovely bit of moral irony.

The real Black Dahlia lived in Santa Barbara, apparently honing her game in this small town before trying the big time in L.A.
She lived right here at 321 Montecito Street, and as I slid by this afternoon to take a picture of the place to send along with the review, I tried, oh how I tried, to feel a sense of her presence. No go. A nice, small cottage adrift on a sea of neatly tended grass, considerately walled off and protected from direct contact with a gritty, funky neighborhood. A place I wouldn't mind having for an office or a get-away cottage.

From what I've read of her, The Black Dahlia was warm-hearted and open, eager to make something exciting of her life in the optimistic bustle and overnight possibilities exploding in post-war Los Angeles. Earl Muntz, the Babbit-gone-wild used car dealer was advertising that he wanted to give his cars away but his wife wouldn't let him. You could get a complete paint job on a car for $19.95 at Earl Scheib, and for an extra ten, you could get a deluxe job, meaning in time that any car thief with twenty bucks in his pocket could keep the cops off his trail. Republic Studios was cranking out Western movies, car hop waitresses at drive-in restaurants were being given screen tests and contracts, talent scouts and agents hung out at The Hollywood Ranch Market on Vine and the world must have seemed filled with limitless promise to Elizabeth Short. Living so close to it all, at 321 Montecito Street, must have filled her with the impatience of her throbbing beauty and youth, steering her to LA with the same kind of blind instinct that sends moths crashing into light fixtures.

There was none of this at 321 Montecito Street today, just a neat, quiet cottage on a Saturday afternoon, across the street from a Santa Cruz Market and around the corner from a 7-11 convenience store, neither of which were likely there when she was.

I first read True Confessions when it came out in 1977, and have returned to it at least twice before thinking to take it out again, go through it, and blend it with my memories of St. John.

The last time I saw him was during the Santa Barbara Writers' Conference of 1993, when it was held at the Miramar Hotel, now a relic awaiting the wrecking ball and some considerable cosmetic surgery. Because my workshop runs sometimes into the early ours of the following morning, it was held in the large basement room directly under the main auditorium. It was already growing late and I was in a listening trance, focused on some manuscript being read when I became aware of someone in the front row, waving to get my attention. He pointed just over my left shoulder toward the entryway, where St. John stood, blue suit, brown shoes, a truly offensive necktie, and a broad, bewitching smile. "Hey, kid," he said.

I moved swiftly for a hug and a handshake. "Buy you a drink sometime," he said, then he was gone.

"Who was that man?" someone in the audience asked.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

I couldn't get The Black Dahlia out of where she used to live, but I got St. John all evening, writing that review of True Confessions.