BANDERSNATCH IN BINARY

by Steve Steinbock

“There are two kinds of people in the world,” Robert Benchley once wrote, “Those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don’t.”

Truer words were never written.

I’m always skeptical of dualities. Most dichotomies, I find, are false. The world is rarely black and white. Next time I hear two people arguing over whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable, there better not be any ripe fruit (or vegetables) on hand or I’ll start throwing them. A tomato is both, for God’s sake.

And a platypus is a mammal that lays eggs.

Are people basically good or basically evil? This is basically a stupid question.

Nineteen Eighty Four and Lord of the Flies are both excellent books. They take different views of how things can go wrong. I won’t suggest that it was the authors’ intentions, but from the two books one can infer opposite views of human nature and society. The former, if taken to the extreme, suggests that civilization is bad for the human spirit. The latter, if taken to the extreme, suggests that the human spirit, if left to its own devices without civilizing constraints, can get nasty. Both are correct. People can be good and they can be bad. Light can be a particle and a wave. A tomato is a fruit and it is a vegetable. Get over it.

(One has to wonder what Lord of the Flies might have been like had Ralph and Jack and the other kids on the plane been female. But that’s a question for another column).

Bottom line, nothing should be taken to extremes. Take the middle path. The human spirit does, on occasion, need to be reined in. If everyone followed their bliss – as Joseph Campbell was wont to preach – there would surely be those for whom rape and pillage would be bliss. On the other hand, too tight a rein (or “reign” if you like) and you’ve got oppressive totalitarianisms like the former Soviet Union or Saddam’s Iraq.

Last Monday in his scribblings, James Lincoln Warren wrote eloquently, and at times viciously, about what he viewed as the various false dichotomies between novels and short stories. It was a great column, and I agreed with 97% of it (regarding the other 3%, I haven’t thought that far). I had a lot of thoughts with which I wanted to respond, but when I realized that my comments would have been almost as long as Jim’s original column, I decided to hold off until today.

In response to the same question, Lawrence Block wrote that, “perhaps you have to be a better craftsman for short stories and a better storyteller for novels, but both are equally important aspects of the writer’s art.” Larry wasn’t quite being committal, but he also had a truism about novels versus short stories. I can’t find the exact quote, but the one thing for certain about short stories is: They’re shorter.

I’m not going to touch the question of short stories versus novels. But I would like to weigh in on the Plot-driven versus Character-driven kerfuffle.

Plot and Character, as I would infer from Jim’s column, ought not to be viewed as the cart or the horse. But rather as two sides of the same coin, as yin and yang, of fruit and vegetables. We need them both, and to suggest that one drives the other is absurd.

Taking anything to extremes is dangerous. It’s like those fad diets. I know people who follow Atkins or Protein Power — eating bacon by the rasher but avoiding fruits because of the carbs — until their livers fall out. Prevention Magazine has been promoting the “Flat Belly Diet” which says that if you eat plenty of monounsaturated fats, you’ll never need to go to the gym. Right!

At that point where poetry meets philosophy, you find Fate at war with Free Will. I like the story of Oedipus, but Sophocles was wrong. Dostoyevsky, now he had the right idea in that great crime novel Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov walked a path directly between his outward circumstances and his own actions.

Victoria Lynn Schmidt wrote some great insights in her Story Structure Architecture. But when, on page 5, she divided the world into plot driven and character driven fiction, I had to put her book back on the shelf. In “plot driven” fiction, she wrote, “plot takes over like a tornado” whereas in “character driven” fiction, “the character moves the story forward through action and choices.” If a tornado comes through town, “the characters will always have the time needed to decide what to do.” Huh?

James Scott Bell, in his Plot and Structure (pg. 15), mentioned the plot-driven versus character-driven dichotomy that divides “literary” from “commercial” fiction, and then wisely wrote: “I find this to be an arbitrary and unhelpful distinction. All plots are character driven.” In other words, a tomato is a vegetable that is also a fruit.

Book Mark Update

I’m sure I’ve written about the Doubleday Crime Club at some point here on Criminal Brief. The Crime Club was not exactly an imprint,

Anyhow, this week I got my hands on a beautiful copy of Anthony Berkeley (Cox)’s The Second Shot, published by Doubleday in 1931 as part of the Crime Club line. Although missing the dust jacket, this copy appears never to have been opened from the time it left the press. And sure enough, tucked inside the front cover was a small flyer/order form with a listing of 14 other volumes published in 1930 and 1931 (including titles by Edgar Wallace, Leslie Charteris, and Philip MacDonald, several of the selections being short story anthologies).

The books back then were a buck apiece. These weren’t what today we would consider book club editions. They were really nice, pre-WWII, hardcover editions. The money saving deal on the bookmark allowed “members” to essentially get free shipping by pre-ordering. (Shipping and handling was a whopping ten cents in 1931!)

This bookmark is as tight and neat today as it was when it came off the printing press nearly eighty years ago. I think I’ll keep it that way.