storytelling

T. Jefferson Parker is on a list of about ten crime/suspense novelists whose work I follow quite closely. I particularly liked his novel Black Water, which I found not only a plain good read and interesting story, but it was also one of those books that haunted me for a long time. I still find myself thinking about the young cop who is suspected of killing his wife, now and then.

I liked California Girl, too, but not as much as his previous work. This is a big novel with a complex plot that moves back and forth in time. I very much like the setting (Orange County in the early 60s, when there were still orange groves) and the sense of the place; I like the two families that are at the center of the conflict. But this is one of those books where I almost loose interest as soon as the dead body shows up. I was far more interested in the resolution of the family problems than I was in the (admittedly tragic) life and death of the girl in question.

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You know I loved the first season of HBOs Deadwood. I wasn't sure at first -- the issue of language anachronisms got in my way -- but by the end, I was in love with the whole production, and in complete awe of the the writing. The character development over the course of that season was masterful.

I still can't figure out how they made me like Al Schwearengen (Ian McShane) -- the profane, murderous, greedy alpha dog of the small mining camp. The masterstroke is this: Al is far more self aware than his counterpart, the virtuous, straight arrow but conflicted and cynical Seth Bullock. Al is who he is, and makes no apologies or excuses; Seth (played by Timothy Oliphant) can't live with himself because he's in love with one woman and married to another.

The second season starts with a long-overdue confrontation between these two, a fist fight of monumental proportions. Rarely do you see (on any screen, small or large) men looking as truly beat up as these two afterwards. It all starts because the outside world is making itself felt in a way that frightens Al, and so he provokes Seth into a fight with a few well chosen words. This episode was perfectly timed from beginning to the end, and so densely packed that I watched it three times before I felt I really caught every nuance.

They aren't going to fix the language anachronisms, but I am so fascinated with the whole enterprise, I'm willing to overlook that. I don't watch a huge amount of tv, but this is now, officially, my favorite program still in production. The rest of my current favorites, not in order: Huff (Showtime), Carnivàle (HBO), Dead Like Me (Showtime), The Sopranos (HBO), The Wire (HBO), Battlstar Galactica (SciFi).

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While I was backing things up and sorting things out I realized that in the process of moving this weblog from one place to another, many entries lost their category tags. It will be a while until I get that fixed, and the category archives will be spotty until I do. So far I have found quite a few posts on things like characterization and writing dialogue that were wandering off by themselves, and had to be sheparded back to the fold. Just FYI.

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Recently I discovered Laura Lippman's novels, by starting with the most recent (stand alone) Every Secret Thing. Now I've read the first two novels in her series set in Baltimore with a lead character called Tess Monaghan, a former newspaper journalist who ends up as a private investigator.

I often bring up the fact that you can have excellent storytelling and good writing in the same book; plot and prose get along very well together, if you let them. The literati are fixated on character these last thirty years or so, to the extent that some of them will tell you that plot is a four letter word. So I'm always really pleased to find a new author who writes beautifully and can tell a closely plotted story at the same time. Every Secret Thing is disturbing and evocative, there are characters you can't quite like but learn to understand anyway, and an unflinching look at some issues of race relations that few authors would be brave enough to take on. This is the story (on the surface) of the abduction and murder of a ten month old baby, and the two little girls who are accused of the crime. It's both what it seems, and something entirely different.

Lippman has a way with dialogue and narrative, too. This is from Butcher's Hill, the second book in the Tess Monaghan series. The setting is a family birthday party, and the first person speaking is Tess's grandmother. The narrative voice (this is Tess's POV) is so personal and on-target that while the story is written in third person, it feels like first. That's quite something to pull off. I don't think I could do it.

"Very fancy, I'm sure. I just can't understand why things can't be the way they used to be."

Tess could. It wasn't just the loss of the house, although it had been a wonderful place for parties, that overgrown Victorian perched on a hill above the Gwynn's Falls, full of secret places, like an old dumbwaiter and the remains of a wine cellar. No, it was the loss of Poppa that had changed the nature of their family gatherings. Overworked and overextended, he had still managed to throw his love at them with both hands, like a little kid pushing up waves of water in a swimming pool. Gramma, in defiance of every known stereotype about grandmothers Jewish or otherwise, had served inedible food and begrudged them every mouthful. Unless one ate too sparingly, in which case she was offended.

I'm very much looking forward to the rest of her novels in the series, but first I'm going to read the new Francine Prose (A Changed Man) and also Gracelin O'Malley by Ann Moore.

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When you have two books underway, do you set days to work on one or the other, or do you just pretty much have to go however the muse tells you to? Is one going more easily than the other right now?

The way I work has changed over the last few years. I don't know why, exactly, although I have some suspicions. But the short answer is: the muse rules. She's the pushiest of broads. I have posted about her before, here. She took exception, and decided to punish me. Now I can't write in the green chairs at all (you'll have to read the post if you want to follow the discussion.)

So, it used to be that I transfered back and forth between books in progress as the muse desired. She was tired of one or stuck on a plot point, she pointed imperiously to the other. After Fire Along the Sky, however, she decided she wanted a longer break and she insisted I work almost exclusively on Tied to the Tracks for quite a long while. Now she's very focused on Queen of Swords, which is a good thing, as I have an October deadline. Once in a while she tries to bring up the subject of Pamaja Jones, but thus far I've been able to distract her back to Queen of Swords by reading her something from a journal or a bit of an 1814 newspaper.

The Book Of Love from the album "69 Love Songs Vol. 1" by The Magnetic Fields

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