Suspicion

The moment suspicion elbows in front of you in the cafeteria line of reality, trust and optimism have suffered setbacks. By its very definition, suspicion evokes pictures of police line-ups, of persons of interest being displayed so that a potential miscreant in their midst might be identified. Suspicion is the fly in the ointment, the fox in the chicken coop, the awareness of and dread response to something gone wrong. It is the herald of the fall, the serpent in the garden, and hell, why not, the snake in the grass.

Things that seem too good to be true generally are in fact too good to be true; along comes suspicion with the notion that things are not as good as they seem, that there is a worse result than the one already planned for. Suspicion is the gut fear that the tab, when presented to you for payment, is going to be more than you bargained for; it is the sickening sensation that there is yet more to come when you believe you have met and gotten into bed with Rock Bottom.

Suspicion is the cynicism we offer up to the cheerful, the naive, those who seem always to have one more cheek to turn, one more smile to offer, one more rabbit to pull out of a hat; it is our protective coating to prevent over-optimistic rhetoric into our thinking and behavior. No wonder it is such a strong presence in the novel of detection, the tale of social consequence, the story of Edenic happiness known as the Utopia. Small wonder utopias are invariably boring and dystopias are so fraught; suspicion looms on the horizon like the rise and set of the sun. Suspicion exists to keep us honest, to convince us that no one, not even protagonists in novels and short stories are perfect; it recognizes our trespasses and the incursions of those who trespass against us. We are alive and suspect even in our better moments. Indeed, some of our better moments come as the direct result of our having suspected ourself of meanness of spirit or lack of motivation. We suspect we could have done more, should have done more, even to the point of seeing retrospective ways in which we could have done so. We could have been better children, better students, better lovers, and when someone praises us for something we have written, our momentary gratefulness is submerged by the suspicion that we could have done better, tapped more into the internal music and vibrant meaning of the work.

We are quick to suspect that some individuals are liars, all the while seeming to ratify our own relationship with the concept of truth, not in the slightest suspicious of our own tidal relationship with such abstractions as absolute accuracy. Parallel lines meet in infinity while truths converge readily within our conscience.

To use the words suspicion or suspect immediately denotes a negativity that haunts the rest of the thought process, the introduction of the worm of doubt into the apple of reality. There are the usual suspects of mystery and cliche fame, the unusual suspects of our imagination and doubt, gaunt, dark-eyed travelers in trench coats who loll about at street corners, waiting with abundant patience for us to pass by, whereupon they follow, just at the outer range of our awareness. We are always suspicious unless we are in those delusional states known as love, happiness, listening to music, or writing. And even then we are fearful, suspicious really, that the love, happiness, music, and writing will not last nor will the coffee that sustains them.

There is nothing worse than being suspected of entertaining some activity we may have contemplated but not yet done--unless it is the worseness of writing about a suspect or some individual's suspicion in an unconvincing way, producing the suspicion that you are not as accomplished a writer as you'd suspected.

The Dystopia

dystopia, novels of--narratives in which the ills of society are exaggerated for thematic effect; cautionary tales demonstrating social, moral, economic, sexual, and religious agendas allowed to run wild.

In the story-telling sense, utopias--stories of perfection and accord--are not really stories because they lack the major dramatic ingredient of conflict. Thus grace is boring, the fall from grace and its consequences a magnet for interest. If everyone gets along, is his brother's keeper, does not covet, etc, the reader will have little reason to continue because, redemption being precluded, there is no big finale to anticipate. If, however, a protagonist, say Ray Bradbury's Guy Montag from Fahrenheit 451, has a gut feeling that there is something wrong about what he is doing, the reader begins to see the inevitability of Montag going up against something quite larger than himself, forced to deal with it.

Seen as a paradigm of a dystopia that cautioned against the consequences of war, The Iliad's most seemly character is Hector. His tragic fate elevates him to a role model for the conflicted protagonist. It was a dumb war to begin with, started when Hector's brother, Paris, made off with his prize from having judged a beauty contest. Hector's wife, Andromache, pleads with him to abandon the war they will surely lose, reminding him that were things to continue, she'd probably be taken as a prize of war and their son, Astyanax, would be killed. As devoted to his wife and son as Hector is, even though he agrees with her assessment, he knows he could not face life, even a life in exile, were he to turn from battle. Nor is Hector naive or insensitive. He well foresees the consequences, but feels obliged to continue, nevertheless.

The backstory conditions of the dystopia--See Brave New World, Logan's Run,1984, The Handmaid's Tale--is the unthinkable come to pass. The present-time narrative of the dystopia sets a protagonist with whom the reader can identify in motion to cope with it.

In its own idiosyncratic and memorable ways, Joseph Heller's Catch-22 is welcomed company in the genre of dystopic fiction, offering forth its modern-day Hector in the form of the bombardier Yossarian. For all her bombast and philosophical sturm und drang, Ayn Rand easily is awarded membership in the Dystopia Society, primarily with Atlas Shrugged and its driven protagonist, Dagny Taggart, but not to forget Howard Roark of The Fountainhead. And not to forget the preternaturally bright Alex, protagonist of Anthony Burgess's enduring dystopia, Clockwork Orange.

Hints: There are seeds of dystopia in every satire, just as there are seeds of satire in every dystopia. If you were to look closely at Tess of the Durbervilles, Jude, the Obscure, and The Mayor of Casterbridge, you could find cause to think of Hardy as a writer of dystopian fiction. Hardy (1840-1928) was a close contemporary of another dabbler in the dystopic, Mark Twain (1835-1910).The 1950-90 science fiction era is larded with dystopic visions, one of many reasons why that genre became literature.

Categorically Speaking

genre--the various categories of fiction; specific niche fiction shelving in bookstores and libraries; a system for classifying types of fiction; defining characteristics of a particular type of fiction.

Readers approach fiction variously for escape, entertainment, inspiration, distraction, and other similar mind- and spirit-enriching reasons. The common denominator for all readers is the understanding that the characters and situations are invented, products of a writer's imagination. This common denominator extends to include the Reader's First Expectation, to wit that the reader will be given sufficient reasons to suspend disbelief, in other words to forget that the characters and situations are unreal, thereupon to consider them as though they were real and accordingly to empathize with them.

The Reader's Second Expectation is that the specific categories or genera will contain but not necessarily be limited to specific circumstances,complications, conditions, emphasis focus, and formulas.

Here are some of the more prevalent fiction genera and what readers expect from them:

Adventure: novels and stories about individuals at accelerated risk and danger.

Chick Lit: young women protagonists, confronting sexuality, shopping, romance, careers, friendship.

Chivalric Romance: men on horses fighting dragons, wicked royalty, and their own sexual urges as they pursue Ms. Right.

Comic Novel: Imagine Ivanhoe of chivalric romance fame, riding off into the sunset with Rebbecca on his horse instead of Rowena. Imagine also Chris Buckley, thanking us for smoking, or that other Chris, Chris Moore, in everything he writes.Imagine satire as a subgenre, in which case you'd have to consider Joe Heller's Catch-22 as an icon.

Crime Novel: one or more murders have been or will be committed,now someone has to find out who and why. The "someone" occasions subgenera such as private investigators, sworn police officers, little old ladies, large young ladies, park rangers, process servers, innocent civilians, etc.

Erotic Literature: Individuals of both genders attempting to get laid with a modicum of originality, told in evocative prose.

Fables, Fairy Tales, and Folklore: Since neither the reader nor writer believe the individuals in these narratives actually existed, the overall tone and payoff must offer the reader something, perhaps a moral or an insight or even a laugh, to repay the time put forth reading them.

Historical Fiction: stories set in a particular period in time, reflecting the details, manners, and customs of that time. These may actually include actual historical personages, either as protagonists or cameo roles.

Literary Fiction: novels and stories having to do with moral choices, philosophical issues, mankind as a species adapting to the social and ethical challenges that confront it.

Picaresque: a more-episodic-than-plotted novel in which a rogue, scoundrel, con-person, deluded or intelligence-challenged person sets forth on a mission (which is usually to seek a fortune, his own or someone else's). You could consider James Leo Herlihy's Midnight Cowboy in this category.

Political Novel: a novel in which one or more of the major players is a politician or is a close-at-hand observer watching politicians as they behave. George Orwell's 1984 is political as well as speculative and cautionary, demonstrating yet other genera. Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men is political as well as biographical. Allan Drury's Advise and Consent takes its title from the U.S. Constitution and involves a number of U.S. Senators in action.

Romance Novel: a youngish woman who is often more attractive then she realizes is forced to make romantic choices.
Speculative Fiction: a novel or story that portrays an if-things-continue-the-way-they're-going scenario; Utopian or dystopian views of as yet unrealized outcomes. Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, George Orwell's 1984, and Philip Roth's The Plot Against America are speculative; so is Robert Heinlein's A Stranger in a Strange Land and, indeed, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.

Alternate History: stories and novels that rewrite actual history, then improvise on what the result might bring. See Len Deighton's SS/GB, and Ward Moore's Bring the Jubilee in which, respectively, Germany won World War II, and the Confederate States of America won the U.S. war between the states.

Fantasy: stories and novels in which magic is a key element. These narratives may also involve alternate universes which are accessed through such a portal as the rabbit hole into which young Alice fell. A subgenera of fantasy has one or more individuals being transformed by magic into an other-than-human form. Yet another subgenera involves a quest for an object which is the power source of magic, such as the sword which only Arthur can withdraw from the stone in which it was embedded.

Horror: The writer's intent is to portray events that will seriously frighten the reader. See Stephen King for any number of role models.

Science Fiction: an extrapolation on actual scientific reality, extended to expand the dramatic, emotional, and moral landscape in the world as we know it or in imaginary worlds where most of the conditions we recognize exist in some modified form. Science fiction may use either the "hard" sciences such as chemistry, geology, or astronomy, or extrapolate on the so-called social sciences ranging from anthropology to political science.

Thriller: the clock is ticking, the metronome is hurrying the pace along, and the good guys are in, seemingly over their heads, in a mismatch against a hugely powerful opponent, while the risk to the protagonists increases.

Conspiracy Fiction: "they," whoever they may be, are against "us," whoever we may be in a paranoid scenario come to life. See Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate as a prime example, but see also the screen version of The Verdict, David Mamet's screenplay adaptation of Barry Reed' s novel in which a down-at-the heels lawyer, superbly played by Paul Newman, goes up against a particular "them," not to forget where it all began in Erskine Childers' still compelling The Riddle of the Sands, followed by Graham Greene's The Ministry of Fear. Lest the genre sound too pulpy, consider Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and Umberto Eco's brilliant spoof, Faucault's Pendulum, by way of injecting literary tropes into the text.

Legal Thriller: bright young attorney goes up against prestigious firms with unlimited resources to tip the scales of justice in favor of an underdog client; fading, possibly alcoholic attorney scores a courtroom triumph, once again proving that justice will out. The deck in legal thrillers is always stacked against the good guys.

Psychological Thriller: Is the narrator psychotic or merely naive? Are the inmates running the asylum? Will the bright young psychiatrist break through the catatonic seizures of the targeted character? What about Richard Powers' penetrating dive into what an ego actually is, via The Echo Maker? If ever there were a rich example of a genre, both literary and thrilling in its implications, this is it. Unless, of course, you wish to consult Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn, in which the private eye genre and the psychological thriller meet up in a back alley somewhere. The protagonist in Motherless Brooklyn is a PI who is afflicted with Tourette's Syndrome, a fact that may or may not trump Powers' protagonist, who is diagnosed with the Capgrass Syndrome.

Spy Fiction: Is it really espionage if you give vital information to a friend or worthwhile cause and are not paid for it? Are there moral justifications for spying? Suppose you are a spy for a cause you are willing to risk your life for as in, say, Graham Green's The Confidential Agent? Whatever your answers, readers of spy fiction are alert for betrayals, double-dealing, and covert operatives being lured into death traps, sometimes by alluring ladies wearing tightly belted trench coats, but sometimes by alluring young ladies wearing nothing at all. Any of the novels by Eric Ambler or John LeCarre will set the bar of performance at an appropriate level.

Tragedy: Back in the day,when Aristotle was alive to write about tragedy, the genre signaled the fall from grace or power of a member of the nobility; it might even mean the tumble from power of an entire family. Now tragedy has become democratized, Death of a Salesman earns its way in the front door, so too do the likes of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and the venture into tragedy inspired by the plight of Hester Prynne, Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Thomas Hardy's novels, particularly Tess, Jude the Obscure, and The Mayor of Casterbridge portray wrenching, tragic events which not only illustrate their own circumstances but remind readers how close at hand the prospect of tragedy is in their own life. Theodore Dreiser was well aware of the implications of his An American Tragedy, wanting to earn recognition as the American, middle- and working-class Henry James. If tragedy is not paced properly, that is to say, if it is speeded up, it tips over into the realm of comedy. Comedy is tragedy on steroids.

Western: first things first; a Western is a historical action novel, set in the American frontier some time after 1840. Some of its many potential themes are well dramatized in Jack Shaefer's magnificent Monte Walsh, which is an episodic, semi-picaresque growing up and aging of a cowboy. Other Western themes: Cows vs. sheep; ranches vs. farms; cowboys and Indians; Indians and the cavalry; the coming of the railroad: free range vs. barbed wire; cattle drives. Western writers to study for imaginative ways out of the conventional themes include Dorothy Johnson, Elmore Leonard, Larry McMurtry (particularly Horsemen Pass By and, later, Lonesome Dove), Mari Sandoz, and Wallace Stegner. In particular, the McMurtry Horsemen is a demonstration that the history of the West is still very much taking place now, involving some of the very issues with which it began its life under the hands of Owen Wister (The Virginian) and Zane Gray's epic, written in 1912, Riders of the Purple Sage.










See genre promise

Writers' Groups: Suburban Dystopias

A dystopia is a universe into which a terrible wrong has been or is about to be done ; a culture in which someone we are made (induced) to care about stands in danger of being creamed by the juggernaut of a particular culture.

The eponymous protagonist of Jane Eyre is not only about to be dumped out of the orphanage and onto the streets, where her prospects of finding a job are not bright, she is told in sympathetic candor by the head mistress of the orphanage that she has yet another hitch to overcome, her lack of beauty. She is, ugh! plain. In many ways the world into which Jane sets forth is the dystopia of class in the England of her day, particularly for women.

Guy Montag, protagonist of the iconic dystopia Fahrenheit 451, has what James Joyce referred to as agenbite of inwit, the remorse of conscience which is snowballing in effect as he pursues his assigned task of burning books. (I can't wait to see Ray Bradbury at the forthcoming Santa Barbara Writers' Conference, to discuss with him the similarity between the book burners and the "fired" U.S. Attorneys.)

Harry Bosch, Michael Connolly's loner from the LAPD, is also a protagonist who sets out in the dystopic world of Los Angeles, protected and served (to quote from their motto) by its police department.

These are a mere sprinkling of characters who must function in a dystopia. Winston Smith had his work cut out for him by his creator, George Orwell, and Eva, much more than a three-letter crossword puzzle clue when she appears in Ms. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, quickly learns she is in a dystopia. And so, as the late, lamented creator of many a dystopia would have said, it goes.

In many ways, all novels are dystopic because it is the inherent nature of story to have something wrong or about to be wrong with a given culture, and so I am not having to force too hard the shoe tree of dystopia into the tight shoe of story.

Dystopias give us pause to wonder what if, what if a social or political or scientific theory advances too far. What if They, whoever They are, come Here, wherever Here is, and gradually outnumber Us?

What about the writers of dystopia, writers whose characters must enter some highly charged atmosphere in order to pursue some dream, solve some puzzle, attempt to work at some craft in which they wish to excel? What about writers, still in the process of learning their craft, finding themselves in the dystopia of the writing group?

The single thing most in danger of being swatted in a writers' group or class is the voice of the individual writer, thanks to the committee-type approach to dealing with material and the sense many group members feel about offering critique taken from Aristotle's Poetics. To be sure, there are enormous possibilities for like-minded writers to catch some detail that might have been missed, but there is also the danger of a kind of standardization being inflicted on the individual by the group.

What to do? How to cope with the workshop situation?

First and foremost, the workshop leader must treat the members in the group the same way an editor treats or deals with authors, as one professional to another as opposed to teacher to student. Suggestions are offered, posed as possibilities, not as absolutes.

My own approach is to regard the complication or dystopia of the particular novel or story, try to put it into the most apparent context, then look for a way to suggest to the author that the complication or conflict can be enhanced. My goal is to push the author to see an even worse-case scenario that the one now present before us, a scenario dire to the point of causing the author some amount of sweat. By pushing the author to the point where the unthinkable emerges out of the story, the author has nothing to fall back on, no tricks or devices, only the artistry of understanding the multifarious range of possibilities within the human schemata.

One of the most prestigious writing programs in the U.S. tends, in my idiosyncratic opinion, to produce graduates who largely sound like one another, which, in my idiosyncratic opinion,is not an effective end result. On the other side of this coin, a writer who, in my idiosyncratic opinion, has one of the most remarkable voices, is a graduate of that school, which leads me to believe that Daniel Woodrell had such a vision of the worlds he writes about that even editorial suggestions given by his literary agent and book editors become quickly translated to the voice in which he speaks with such authority and grace.

How do we encourage writers to sound like themselves? When we deal with them, we do our best to find ways to point out to them how to make their own dystopias more dystopic--how to make the unthinkable become even more unthinkable, and to bring it to pass in a way that is so plausible as to send a shiver through Franz Kafka's ghost; then we sit around and cheer as they try to work their way out.