Faceless Killers--Henning Mankell

Mankell is a writer of Swedish noir; he inspired Stieg Larsson, and, perhaps, me.  I've been purposely trying to learn as I read these days.  Not in an academic way--at least until I take my next Masters class--but in a way that I understand writing better so that my writing is also better.  I wrote a recent blog about this, using Dan Simmons' Drood as a primer, so I won't do that again here.

In short, here's what I liked about Faceless Killers (besides the title).  The thing that struck me first, by about page 20, was that if Raymond Carver wrote Swedish noir, it would turn out like this.  Carver was a writer of more depth than this novel, appropriately, shows, but the type of writing is the same.  Both writers make the very ordinary seem very important.  Carver would write, "He placed the bottle of champagne on the table," in exactly the same way several times in the same 12-page short story, and it would carry weight each time.  (I still don't understand how he was able to do that.)  Mankell does the same here, but, again, without the strange depth.  His words and sentences do have depth, just not the same emotional (or emotionless) as Carver's did.

Secondly, Mankell's Kurt Wallander has very real, gritty problems, shown in very gritty sentences.  For example, and pardon the lack of etiquette here, but Wallender has this gastro-intestinal problem--a combination of bad eating habits and lots of stress, caused by his job and his recent marriage break-up--and the novel shows twice that he eats a hotdog, or a pizza, too fast and has to rush to the bathroom with diarrhea.  And I'm not paraphrasing or inferring here.  It says that he ate too fast, that he had to run to the bathroom, and that he had diarrhea.  The first time, it also says that he realizes he has to change his underwear.  Now that's intense.  The short, clipped, Carver-esque sentences create a dreamy, distant, slowly re-awakening feeling in the character that really is what the novel is about.  That, and what is going wrong with Sweden in those days.  The two-headed theme is: What went wrong with my marriage?--and--What went wrong with Sweden?  They go hand-in-hand here.  The setting, as you'd might expect from Sweden, is a character in of itself in the same way that the same type of weather was for Fargo and Smilla's Sense of Snow.

Anyway, this novel got me to consider ditching the 1st person narration of one of my "finished" mystery mss. and allowing my writing style to show the main character's traits in ways that I thought only 1st person could.  And it also made me realize that although the mystery starts right away in my novel, the actual crime isn't shown until midway.  (Other crimes, including murders and other cases the character takes on, are shown much earlier, all starting on page 1.)  But this was a real eye-opener for me in that it shows that maybe the packaging of my novel is all wrong.

We'll see.  Anyway, Faceless Killers is highly recommended.  I just bought most of the Wallender series a few hours ago.  The supposed last one, A Troubled Man, comes out very soon, the first Wallender book in 10 years.  Mankell says it's definitely the last, but I'll bet he also said that 10 years ago.

A Different Library and the T206

Photo: National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

I'm sitting here now at a different library than the one I'm used to.  This one is practically across the street from Borders, so I can quickly go there to work on my paper when the library closes.  I am enough of a literary freak to really appreciate libraries, and different places to write in general.  The best I've ever been in is the New York Public Library in Manhattan, which is beautiful beyond description and even owns not one, but two (!) Honus Wagner T206 cards.  One of them was pasted to a piece of paper a long time ago, and each time I see that one I want to scream.  What a waste!

But I digress.  This library is better, but worse.  They are on guard for all things liquid, so my iced coffee resides behind the reference desk.  The guy next to me has his in his cubicle with him, but I won't turn him in.  Not that kind of guy.  But they wouldn't even let me put it on the big table behind me.  I'm clearly over it.  These cubicles, though, are very cool because they have three plugs built into the left corner of each one, so I don't have to trail my Mac's cord across a room to plug it in.  My cubicle seems to be the main one, too, because there is also a large surge protector beneath it, in case I had 27 more things to plug in.  This cubicle also has a shelf just above those plugs, and the desk of the cubicle itself is big, so that the whole situation is very convenient.  Nice!

I also noticed that there are a ton of books about the Middle Ages, and even some that are encyclopedias of everyday life of various eras.  How cool is that?!?  So I know where to come and research for the chapters of the past for my plague novel (research for much of it you will find in previous blog posts, below).  This area is also relatively quiet, especially now that the buffaloes behind me are gone.  They had been playing loud games on the library computers and, after pausing, talking loudly about them, like they were in their 80s and wearing hearing aids.  Why didn't the coffee police speak to them?  Never mind, I'm over it.  Clearly.

The paper is going well.  I found a story by Chekhov and one by Munro that both contain the following things: remote location (this works literally and figuratively); thoughtful and reflective characters; a sudden kiss by an unexpected person; epiphanies caused by the kiss; a bridge at the end (also effective for literal and figurative purposes--and structural ones, too); minor characters who do not think or reflect as often or as deeply; minor characters who do not seem to suffer--or to be as aware--because of this; and overall examples of the everyday and their ordinary characters' responses to these everyday things.  I have so much, in fact, to comment on, and to cite, that I might not have the space for a Carver comparison after all.  Fine with me.  We'll see.

Chekhov, Munro and Carver

I haven't posted in a few days.  Working hard on my latest paper for the present grad. class, and besides I've been just plain exhausted.  I even took a nap at home after work the last few days, which is not common for me.

So, this paper.  I've decided to show the similarities between Chekhov, Munro and Carver, since the latter two are often compared to the first.  Munro was famously called "our Chekhov" by fellow writer--and Canadian--Cynthia Ozick, and Carver wrote a short story about the last moments of Chekhov, who was a favorite of Carver's.  Carver spoke of him exhaustively.

This paper will start with several quotes of people who compare Munro and Carver to Chekhov, because of structural and textual reasons.  Then I begin the comparisons themselves by comparing Chekhov's "The Kiss" to Munro's "Floating Bridge."  I do this because both stories are structurally similar.  They're both essentially plotless--things just kinda happen.  Then there's the primary image, for which both stories are titled.  Both end with the characters standing on a bridge, both literally and metaphorically.  In Chekhov, this bridge is, of course, one of despair; in Munro, it is, of course, of a hopeful epiphany.  It'd be wonderful if I could also do this for one of Carver's stories, but for now a similar story with this many similarities escapes me.  But I checked out his Complete Stories, so I hope to find one.

I have decided all of this today.  This paper is due Tuesday at 4pm, and I have to work Monday and Tuesday, so I basically have tonight, all day and night tomorrow, and then Monday night, to type the whole thing.  Final product must be 12-15 pages, MLA, all that.  Wish me luck!!!

Epigrams: Lorrie Moore, Birds of America (Short Story Collection)

My better half tells me this blog should have a consistently different theme every day, like Monday is poetry day; Tuesday, epigram day; and so on.  While I realize this isn't a bad idea, I'm also the kinda guy who wants to do what he wants to do (within appropriate reason, whatever that is), and right now I want to share some awesome epigrams by Lorrie Moore.  I wouldn't be able to do this without vetoing myself, so I'm willing to hear ideas about this.  Who's for saying that I should stick to some sort of system?  Who's for The Whatever?

And a little thing about short story writers: While novelists and screenwriters generally bring in the really huge bucks, the multi-million dollar deals, the quality of short story writers is sadly overlooked.  Bad novelists still rake it in, but short story writers don't have the luxury of being bad; they first have to get their stories published in places like The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Harper's, before they "collect" their stories into a book, and those places simply do not publish bad writing.  And in the short story, every word counts, so wordy writers like Stephen King would have a problem (and let's face it, he hasn't written consistently high-quality short stories in a long time now).  So go check out Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro, Raymond Carver and other short story collections; you will find some very high quality writing there.

And, by the way, Google Scholar has Lorrie Moore's Birds of America for free.  But, anyway, without further ado, here are a few of its gems:

This lunge at moral fastidiousness was something she'd noticed a lot in the people around here.  They were not good people.  They were not kind.  They played around and lied to their spouses.  But they recycled their newspapers!---"Community Life" p. 73

...She had lost her place, as in a book...One should live closer to where one's parents were buried.--ibid. p. 77.

..."The United States--how can you live in that country?" the man asked.  Agnes had shrugged.  "A lot of my stuff is there," she'd said, and it was then that she first felt all the dark love and shame that came from the pure accident of home, the deep and arbitrary place that happened to be yours.

Thank God, thank God, she was not her mother.

Over the years, she and Joe tried to have a baby, but one night at dinner, looking at each other in a lonely way over the meat loaf, they realized with shock that they probably never would.  Nonetheless, after six years, they still tried, vandalizing what romance was left in their marriage.---"Agnes of Iowa," pgs. 78-95

Holding fast to her little patch of marital ground, she'd watched as his lovers floated through like ballerinas...all of them sudden and fleeting, as if they were calendar girls ripped monthly by the same mysterious calendar-ripping wind that hurried time along in old movies...What did Ruth care now?  Those girls were over and gone.  The key to marriage, she concluded, was just not to take the thing too seriously.

The only way to know absolutely everything in life is via an autopsy.

In this way--a wedding of emotionally handicapped parking spaces...they'd managed to stay married.  He was not such a bad guy!--just a handsome country boy, disbelieving of his own luck, which came to him imperfectly but continually, like crackers from a cookie jar.

He looked crazy and ill--but with just a smidgen of charisma!

Every house is a grave, thought Ruth.

If she had to go on a diet with a fake woman's name on it, she would go on the Betty Crocker diet...

---"Real Estate," pgs. 177-211.

This is but a sample.  Short story writers are the true wordsmiths and artists.  No one gets rich just writing short stories.  Check out Alice Munro's Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, too.