Friday, February 1: Bandersnatches
A MATTER OF TASTE
by Steven Steinbock
My grandmother was a font of pithy sayings. She didn’t always understand what they meant, and so her aphorisms often didn’t fit the situation. In fact, sometimes her words meant the opposite of what she intended. For instance, she always spoke her mind, and made assertive requests of waiters, store clerks, or police officers. When we would tease her about her forwardness, she would respond in her native Spanish: “En boca cerrada no entra mosca” (“Into a closed mouth, a fly cannot enter”). Now, the rest of us would have chosen a different adage (“the squeaky hinge gets the oil” comes to mind). Taking her motto at face value, she was essentially saying that it’s good to speak up, because otherwise you won’t get any flies in your mouth.
Whenever any of us grandkids were arguing about something, she would break it up with “We all have our differences. That’s why God made chocolate and vanilla.” I’m skeptical about whether ice cream flavors have anything to do with settling disputes. But her comment has stayed with me.
Apropos of nothing at all, I’ve been thinking about flavors of fiction. A decade ago I held disdain for Romance and Western fiction. These, I assumed, were fodder for horny old women and men who only speak in single syllables, respectively. I now realize I was not only being a snob, but I was just plain wrong. I’ve read enough Romance novels to realize that, while they are formulaic and not quite my cup of tea, they are generally well written, engaging, and satisfying. Not only do I respect Westerns, I really enjoy them.
A dozen or so years ago there was an amusing battle of words that appeared in the British press between P.D. James and arch-noir writer Mark Timlin. It began during a BBC interview in which P.D. James explained that her novels tend to be set in educated, middle-class settings because one isn’t apt to find “moral choice” or “the contrast between good and evil” in the inner-city, where “crime is the norm and murder is commonplace.” Several British noir writers took umbrage at this, and several “traditional” crime writers took offense at the noir writers’ responses. In the midst of this hubbub, Timlin resigned from the Crime Writers Association and announced that “I would rather stick needles in my eyes than rejoin.” The dust hadn’t quite settled when the 1995 Bouchercon set up camp in Nottingham. It was an interesting time.
Much of the debate was centered on the lack of realism in “traditional” mysteries, and the lack of decorum among noir. Now, I’ve read quite a few of Timlin’s novels, and quite a few of James’. The truth is that they’re both very good writers. I enjoy their characters and their stories. As to the claim that hard-boiled writing of Timlin’s style is more “realistic,” I’m dubious. If even the toughest hard-gutted man were to ingest the quantity of pills, booze, and cocaine as Nick Sharman does in a typical chapter of one of Timlin’s early books, he would be more likely in a coma than capable of solving crimes. But that’s why God made chocolate and vanilla.
Back in April of 2004, in anticipation of the Malice Domestic convention, Otto Penzler wrote a piece for the New York Sun about the 2003 Agatha Award finalists. It wasn’t so much a review as it was a lynching. The piece might have been more amusing if it wasn’t so mean. He defined cosies as books “that contain no explicit sex, excessive gore, or gratuitous violence. Unstated, but clearly of equal importance, is that they must contain not a scintilla of style, originality, or depth. They must have the texture and nuance of an infomercial, lacking only its philosophical power.” He described the six finalists as “throw-away” books, and qualified that “I think they should be thrown away before they are read.” (Sorry, there’s no direct link to this article, but Sarah Weinman and Lee Goldberg both discussed it on their excellent blogs). Otto is a good critic, and has been a good friend to the genre. My tastes generally agree with his. But my feeling is that if you don’t like cosies, then don’t read them! All six of the 2003 Agatha nominees were not only good books, but in terms of style, originality, and plotting, they were very good books. But they aren’t Otto’s cup of tea. Most of them aren’t my cup either. But if I critique them, I do so based on their own merits. I don’t judge cosies because they’re not hard-boiled.
Some tastes rest along gender lines. No surprise, but women, on average, tend to read women authors, and men tend to read novels by men. And generally you’ll find less interpersonal depth in novels by male writers, and less violence and aggression in books by women. Consider Raymond Chandler versus Agatha Christie, Robert B. Parker versus Carolyn Hart, or Mark Timlin versus P.D. James.
Chocolate and Vanilla aren’t the same as Black and White. Male and female aren’t the same as noir and cosy. Pronzini’s hard-boiled writing has shown more clever, traditional plotting than most modern cosies. The books celebrated at Malice Domestic have considerably more sex than the books read by NoirCon attendees.
By the way, last year when CADS magazine published a booklet entitled Private Passions and Guilty Pleasures, Timlin shocked everybody by admitting that he is a lifelong fan of Agatha Christie. He read them all as a child, and watches the Joan Hickson “Miss Marple” programs with religious devotion.
As for me, I like chocolate. Except when I choose vanilla.
Fun article. I remember the James/Timlin squabble. Makes me nostalgic for the MWA/SIC battle and the great DeAndrea/Gorman quarrel. Ah, I’m a veteran of many wars.
Does anyone remember Lawrence Block’s sgugestion that there should be seperate prizes for books with and without cats?
I don’t remember the DeAndrea/Gorman quarrel. Refresh my memory.
Today’s column has already been referenced and talked about on the Golden Age of Detection Yahoo group. My hope is that the wedge isn’t pushed in any deeper. The mystery/crime genre has a broad enough umbrella that we can all fit beneath it.
Also, I hoped that my column would dispell the impression that these divisions are black and white. Modern readers tend to lump Cosy and Traditional mysteries together. That’s a mistake. Christie was the best known exemplar of both, but that doesn’t make them the same.
A “traditional” mystery, if I had to define it, is one in which the hero solves the case using intellect (rather than brute force, dumb luck, or intelligent cats). A few Traditional mystery writers include R. Austin Freeman, H.C. Bailey, and John Dickson Carr. Bill DeAndrea did it, too. The only living writer that comes to mind is Bill Pronzini, who effectively manages to write stories with one foot in Traditional footwear, and the other foot in a Gumshoe’s hard-boiled loafers.
By the way, in my column I decided to use the spelling “cosy” rather than the more common American “cozy.” My understanding is that the word, as it was originally applied to mysteries, referred to tea cosies – a kind of sweater for teapots (also sometimes spelled with a “z” in the US) – and not the adjective “cozy” (which is almost always spelled with a “z”) meaning “comfortable” or “snug.”
JLW, o great wordmeister, do you have any opinions on this?
British “cosy” and American “cozy” are the same word, illustrating the American preference to use “z” instead of “s” to represent voiced sibilants. Other examples are “floosie” (Br.) v. “floozy” (US), and many words that end in “-ize”, i.e., “merchandise” (Br.) v. “merchandize” (US), etc.
“Cosy” first appeared in early 18th c. Scots dialect (spelled “colsie”) as an adjective with the meaning “warm and comfortable; snug”; by the 1730s it had changed to “cosie”. It was first applied to the “tea cosy” in the middle of the 19th c., a natural adaptation of the adjective, since the quilted teapot cover is meant to keep the beverage warm.
The general preference for the British spelling when describing the mystery subgenre is a reflection of the essential Britishness of the subgenre itself.
I do not agree, however, that Agatha Christie ever wrote a cosy, the Agatha Award being a teapot notwithstanding. True, cosies are ultimately derived from Miss Marple, but Miss Marple herself is very much a “traditional” detective. In most cosies, the amateur detectives are exactly as they appear: nosy and inquisitive and sociable; Miss Marple by contrast is extremely deceptive in appearance–she’s an old cynic with the tenacity of a terrier, fully capable of exploiting acquaintances for her own purposes, her sense of justice only slightly mitigated with any sense of compassion. She is categorically not the sweet little old lady everybody assumes her to be. In that sense, she’s more akin to the idiot-seeming Sir Percy Blakeney than to her many country house successors. That’s why Joan Hickson’s dignified Edwardian Miss Marple is so much preferred by those of us who are hardcore fans to Geraldine McEwan’s saccharine dotty old gossip.
Steven, there’s an excellent William Brittain short story called (I think) “The Man Who Read Dashell Hammett” which makes the same point you just did. James, I think Agatha Christie herself said she based Miss Marple on her two maiden aunts who always expected the worst of people and were rarely dissapointed in that!
Rob, I do indeed recall Lawrence Block’s suggestion, and I agree with it. In fact I agree with most of his advice. ( I especially enjoy his views on fiction writing because I think he’s just as good at short stories as he is at novels.) I loved his monthly columns in Writer’s Digest.
Back in 1988 WIlliam DeAndrea interviewed Donald E. Westlake for the late great magazine The Armchair Detective. Not for the first time, DEW said some critical things about hardboiled PIs.
The next issue of Mystery Scene featured an article by the pseudonymous Jeff Holden who didn’t like what Westlake said in the interview, and who referred to Bill D and his fellow interviewer Ric Meyers as toadies.
DeAndrea: “Now. I don’t have many fighting words, but, by God, ‘toady’ is one of them. My dictionary defines toady as ‘a fawning flatterer; one who offers insincere praise for personal gain.'” (…) “Question my taste, I reply with a shrug. Question my intelligence, you get an argument. Question my integrity, and it’s war.”
It turned out that Jeff Holden was Ed Gorman, the founder and then-publisher of Mystery Scene. The resulting column by DeAndrea is one of my favorite pieces of writing from TAD.
Jeff, glad you brought up Bill Brittain. A great short story writer. He did a bunch of the “Man who Read. . .” stories as well as a series of stories about a crimesolving high school science teacher named Mr. Strang. His stories clearly fit in the “Traditional” mode. He doesn’t do many short stories any more, but he’s a popular and active juvenile/YA author.
To the list of “Traditional” writers named in my article, I’d add a few others that come to mind: Peter Lovesey, HRF Keating, Martin Edwards, and Michael Z. Lewin. My list is very Y-chromosome weighted. I apologize. But I’d include Ngaio Marsh and Patricia McGerr (alas, both no longer living).
JLW, thank you for clarifying the etymology of cosie/cozy, and setting me straight about Jane Marple. She’s decidedly un-cozy. What about Tommy and Tuppence Beresford? They’re kind of cozy.
I’ve said more than I should have about traditional mysteries. Google “Michael Grost Classic Mystery” if you want to read more.
DeAndrea’s columns were always the first things I read when The Armchair Detective arrived in my mail. I’ll have to dig back and find the column you’re referring to, Rob. [TIME OUT] I’m back. I found it. It’s the Summer 1989 issue (22:3) with Ruth Rendell on the cover.
Incidentally, Rob, I think it was right after I first met you at that escalator in Seattle that I met Bill DeAndrea in the elevator. What a wonderful guy he was. I was also lucky enough to sit with him at the Anthony Awards banquet that year. I spoke with him after that, but Seattle was the last time I saw him in person.
Lawrence Block had another suggestion, if I’m remembering correctly. Although I don’t think he’s had a drink in decades, Block recommended sitting down with a Fredric Brown novel and a bottle of whiskey. Every time the main character takes a drink, join him. Not a productive way to read, but it sure sounds fun.
I always thought of Tommy and Tuppence as being along the lines of the early Allingham Campion stories, as much adventures with attractive young principals as mystery stories. There’s a bit of the film version of Nick and Nora in there, not to mention the much later Lord Peter and Harriet–not really cosy at all.