Mystery

For reasons of pride, snobbery, and misunderstanding, readers and writers of the mystery novel were for some long while relegated to the literary equivalent of the back of the bus. The analogy uses racism as its fulcrum, and has been losing its literary overtones more quickly than the actual conflicts of racism in the real world. More readers and, indeed, more writers are coming to see that even such wildly drawn-out examples as Samuel Richardson's memorable Pamela bear some relationship to the internal thrust of the mystery. At the very least, the readers of Pamela wondered openly whether the eponymous Pamela would or would not, which is to say would or would not deliver her virginity to her most persistent suitor without the regalia of marriage. There was also the suspense of wondering who Pamela was in real life.

The mystery was the pre-television equivalent of television in the sense that back in the day, readers who turned their noses at mysteries were likely to have been reading them in the closet just as it later became fashionable to acknowledge the presence and draw of television but to opt one's self from the viewing public, establishing one's self as separate and with better things to do.

When no less a writer than Eudora Welty wrote a review of Ross Macdonald's estimable The Underground Man, which appeared on the front page of The New York Times Book Review and proclaimed The Underground Man as literature, the genie was at last out of the bottle. It was no longer infra dig to read or write mystery novels and the expectation was that, as so many novels do without having to be urged, the mystery novel would not only solve moral issues, it would address ethical conundrums in more detail yet.

At its simplest level, the mystery novel acknowledged self-interest and corruption to be epidemic, resulting in crimes against individuals, classes, organizations, and entire countries. Somewhere there was an individual, a Philip Marlowe or a V. I. Warshawsky, who would momentarily remove the occasion of corruption, even according some form of justice however rough to serve as an example that "they," whoever "they" were, could not get away with what they were doing forever. In some cases the heroes and heroines of the mystery were later-day Knights Templar, their drinking and screwing achieved off stage while on stage they pursued and brought to justice the modern equivalents of the Saracen.

For those of us who have read extensively in the mystery field, there is a significant pattern, Darwinian in its progression, of development, including the highly rational approach of Sherlock Holmes and the more treacly religiosity of Father Brown, that clerical product of Gilbert K. Chesterton. Mike Hammer worked among the private investigators as did Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer. These names, not intended as a laundry list, reflect some of the many approaches to the mystery, a format that seems to reach out to us, to each in the way and voice of the individual's politics and code of ethics.

Early in the game, mysteries tended to be set among the affluent, where there were such things as butlers, chamber maids, drawing rooms, and dressing for dinner. There were still crimes of violence in the urban areas but those were not abuses meted or suffered with the panache and decorum of estate angst. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler were among a small group of mystery writers who more or less democratized crime, brought it into the corner saloon, the garage, the den, gave it back to the people. In earlier novels, the police were a bit on the thick side intellectually, ample proof that the more educated one was, the better one could detect or default. When mysteries came to America, police were not only thick, they were often corrupt. and it took a Phil Marlowe or Sam Spade to effect a better justice.

What better way to look at a given culture than through an investigation of its mysteries and secrets, and to assess the consequences of those very conditions? What man, woman, or child is not afflicted with mysteries and secrets?

What's Your Story?

Back in the day, when the concept of story lurched from the primordial ooze of conversation and pulpit-driven homilies, inching its way toward entertainment and provocation of thought and in the bargain developing the ability to conceptualize, the medium of transfer was the spoken word, delivered in a chant or intonation, a mellifluous recitation, or the multi-voiced presentation of an ensemble of speakers.

By the time story had reached such sophistication as serial publication, magazines, books, iPod and computer screens, books on tape and, more recently, CDs, it had undergone its own Darwinian progression from tale of caution, such as, say, Pamela or Robinson Crusoe, each with a built-in message to an eager audience, to the Pre-Obama message of Yes, We Can as evidenced by the Horatio Alger novels, and, as such things go, back to the present. Now, at present, we are looking at stories more than a little cautionary in nature, taking us on journeys through some noir landscape, where it is not always possible to lead the life of moral compass we wish, thanks to the distractions about us of fear, social pressures, needs, and demagoguery.

Through it all, story has remained a series of elements, DNA if you will, that are arranged according to the time and place of telling. Memorable stories--the kind all of us as writers wish to tell--have in common a protagonist with whom we establish some sort of bond, whether that protagonist is Rebecca Rowena Randall, sent to Maine to live with her two stern aunts, or perhaps with the more contemporary fifty-years from Rebecca Rowena inner conflicts of Holden Caulfield, who tells us of his ouster from Pencey Prep School and his downward spiral to fragmentation as he attempts to emerge unscathed from adolescence.

Two vital elements, a principal character and a quest. Establish these in all sincerity (which is to say in a manner you, hypocrite lecteur, mom semblance, mom frere, believe), and you are on your way, discovering as you write the true destination or what the story is about.

Digby Wolfe speaks of the destination in Hamlet:

"Imagine a TV Guide synopsis of “Hamlet”: “Gloomy Dane pursues his father’s assassin.” It sounds stupid but it’s important that you basically know the shape of the story you’re going to tell, or at least have a rough idea of its beginning, middle and end. Hold these points loosely but firmly in your mind—allowing room for surprise, for yourself as well as the audience. You may alter your original devices many times along the way, and inspire ideas that were hitherto no more than shadows on your unconscious mind--but a sense of direction that isn’t completely prefigured can be very useful. It may keep you from getting lost. It also forces you to look at the story as a deliberate sequence of dramatic events--not just an uneventful state of being. Not one damn thing after another, but one damn thing because of another. Remember, this is drama, not just a group of people sitting around chatting about the price of corn futures. Something happens, and it has to happen dramatically in order to change the characters’ lives and keep the audience in a state of excited anticipation."

One damn thing because of another! Enter the stealthy pickpocket of causality. Things happen in stories not merely because they are supposed to but because they have been provoked. Bobby DuPre, the iconic Jack Nicholson character in Five Easy Pieces, sweeps the dishes and condiments from the diner table because he has been provoked to the point of combustion, not so much by the waitress as by what the waitress represents. The eponymous protagonist of Hamlet seeks revenge because he has been bidden to do so by his father's ghost, a powerful enough incentive to rouse him into action of such intensity that he is pushed beyond the point of no return.

Wolfe has done a nice deconstruction on Hamlet; if you're sufficiently interested, I'll get his permission to post it. In substantial agreement with him on this rush of causality, I call your attention to an earlier drama, perhaps a bit more otherworldly, but nonetheless relevant, particularly in light of a joint venture in progress with Wolfe. I speak of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. No matter which version you choose, the Mallory, or the excellent modern translation/renditions, the stakes are the same. Gawain is goaded into accepting a challenge from a mysterious knight clad in green. The challenge: They will exchange blows. Gawain goes first. The Green Knight is to be given his chance a year and a day later. On his first shot, Gawain lops off the Green Knight's head. Not bad, the Green Knight says, scooping up his head, tucking it under his arm (You should hear Wolfe sing "With his 'ead tucked underneath 'is arm")reminds Gawain of their meeting a year and a day hence, then goes off to his horse, er, 'orse, mounts up, and rides off. Which brings up the next question. After causality, we ask What's at stake?

Gawain has a year and a day to understand what's at stake. With him, we understand that he is almost certain to meet death at the hands of the Green Knight. But first. Ah, talk about the Labors of Hercules. First, Gawain must endure the considerable offerings of the wife of his host at a wayside inn. Dare I call it Knight's Rest?

Where you begin your story, where and how you end it are your call to the point that where you start, where and how you end will contribute mightily to the next piece in this puzzle: How to make it your own.