Shoes

Mark Billingham here, sending greetings from unseasonably sunny London. I’m hugely grateful to Sarah for the invitation to guest blog, and full of admiration that she has been able to dig up so many skeletons from my comedy closet. Where does she FIND this stuff? Anyway, glad I left all that behind…

It’s an honour to be stepping into the shoes of a number of great writers and good friends: my old mucker Martyn Waites, the wonderful Denise Mina and of course the Shoedog himself. I’ve always been a bit confused about that expression, you know, the one about how you can’t judge a person until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes? I mean, fine, go ahead, but at the end of the day who cares if you’ve misjudged them or not? You’ve still got their shoes.

On the subject of which, I was thinking about the extent to which most writers are following in another’s footsteps, standing on the shoulders of giants, or however else you’d care to describe it. Which of us can honestly claim that our stuff is not a bit like someone else’s? How many can hold up a hand and say that our books could not reasonably come plastered with marketing blurb describing it as “a must for anyone who’s a fan of A.N. Other”? This was in my mind when I put together a panel for the Harrogate Crime-Writing Festival recently called “Unique Voices”, with a number of writers who, it seemed to me, were breaking new-ish ground; who were not like anyone else I could think of, and would be hard to pigeonhole. The panel gave the marvellous John Connolly a platform to rant splendidly about how few crime-writers seemed willing to take risks and how little experimentation there was within the genre. Now John was of course playing Devil’s Avocado to an extent, and I know this has been discussed before, but what do we think?

Who are the writers whose voices you would consider to be genuinely unique? Is the book that takes risks and falls on its arse worth any more than the one which plays safe and does not? Is a reluctance to step outside one’s comfort zone understandable in the light of commercial pressures?

Mark (currently sporting brown, corduroy Converse All-Stars. Like a teacher who cant quite decide if he’s doing PE or geography…)

Comments

[Kevin Wignall]

There are several ways of being a unique voice, and I suspect one of them is a hiding to nothing. In fact this is something you and I discussed at Harrogate.

David Peace or David Mitchell could be said to write in a fresh and unique way, but it's style-driven and a lot of people find that alienating, myself included.

I'm more interested in exploring unique aspects of an apparently familiar story or subverting reader expectations. It's a subtler approach but it's apparent if you compare the work of most crime writers today with what was being produced even twenty years ago.

There also uniqueness of vision, and you'll find bags of that in children's fiction. "Mortal Engines" by Philip Reeve is a good place to start.

[Ingrid (I.J.Parker)]

Olen Steinhauer.

[Clair Lamb]

Quite a few writers are using the crime fiction structure to make bigger statements or explore the themes that interest them -- Pelecanos with HARD REVOLUTION, Kate Atkinson with CASE HISTORIES, Mo Hayder with PIG ISLAND -- and that's the genre at its best, even if those books use many of the time-honored conventions.

Seen properly, almost all great literature is crime fiction -- THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, THE GREAT GATSBY, and TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES are all stories about murder.

But people read crime fiction for entertainment, and I get impatient with uniqueness for uniqueness' sake. I've been struggling to get through Dustin Long's ICELANDER for more than a month now -- even though I appreciate its wit and aspiration -- because it's just more work than I feel like putting in. (My shame about that is why I'm still trying.)

[dan fesperman]

The process of identifying an original voice isn't something you can really quantify, or else your judgement ends up falling within the bounds of pre-determined guidelines, and how original is that? The writer's willingness to move further afield is what makes the work seem fresh. For me, two fairly recent books come to mind -- one well known, the other little known. One is "Motherless Brooklyn," not just for the novelty of Jonathan Lethem's narrative from the POV of someone with Tourette's, but for its quirky take on the conventions of a PI novel. The other, "Deepwater," by Matthew Jones, appears at first to be a very nicely done bit of noir fiction, but by book's end you realize you've been artfully led astray by a dangerously imbalanced mind. As spookily atmospheric as anything I've read, but I've yet to come across anyone else who has read it. It certainlt deserved more attention than it ever got.

(Carry on, Mark! A pleasant surprise to find you here this a.m.)

[Sandra Ruttan]

There is such a thing as trying to hard to be unique and failing spectacularly.

But there is also something to be said for some writers who are willing to push into new territory failing not because the work doesn't hold up, but because the industry ensures they won't succeed. Think back to Harrogate 2005 and the 'How To Get Published Panel' with Jane Wood talking about what publishers want - not something completely different, but something that has a bridge from what is known to what is unknown. In other words, the same with a few differences.

It is when you move too far beyond the current comfort zone that you risk not having agent support, publisher support and industry recognition. And certainly, if the publisher isn't pushing for reviews or promotion of the book because they don't believe in, the book may fail simply because it lacks support.

And perhaps part of the problem is the very human tendency to compare and categorize everything, instead of letting a book succeed or fail on its own merits, not who it's like or isn't like.

What tends to be most interesting is watching an author who is successful early on as their career evolves. A few books in seems to be when they either get interesting, or show they were nothing but an imitation.

[Laura]

It's hard to be unique. In fact, the human mind may be wired to reject uniqueness, to make associations, to catalog and categorize. Back in Sesame Street days, when you played "One of these things is not like the other," didn't you feel sorry for the left-out thing? Okay, maybe that was just me.

Right now, I'm just getting into John Connolly's The Book of Lost Things. (Preparation for our panel, Mark and Dan! Although, given the topic, I suppose we'll actually discuss our own work much.) I'm only thirty or so pages in, but it reminds me of . . . James Ellroy's My Dark Places. Not because both books center on a boy losing his mother, but because their styles create this claustrophobic tension that makes you feel as if you might crack, or start screaming. Yet their styles couldn't be more different, so perhaps I'm just lurching around, trying to make connections where none exist.

Risk-taking, genre blending, unusual voices, different methods of storytelling -- all possible. Uniqueness? Maybe Finnegans Wake, but I've never made it past page three.

(Black loafers.)

[Kevin Wignall]

Sandra makes a good point - publishers want to be able to call it unique, but they don't necessarily want unique.

And as Laura says, perhaps that's also what we want as readers.

(Barefoot in Gloucestershire)

[Mark Billingham]

I very much agree with you Kevin about alienation and think, as Clair said that uniqueness for the sake of it is pointless. Setting out to be different seems every bit as ridiculous as setting out to be like someone else. You may find your own voice quickly or never, but that surely has to be the only sensible aim.

With you on Lethem, Dan, and of course, as Sandra points out, the industry is designed to limit those who try to push the envelope too far.

Laura, I hope you enjoy TBOLT. I thought it was extraordinary. And you've read three more pages of Finnegan's Wake than I have. Does it have any car chases?

Mark

[Laura]

No, but the cop-hero meets a prostitute and begins to think he might learn to love, only then she's made into sausage and served to him for breakfast, with a Mickey-Finn-laced mimosa and when he wakes up, he's really, really mad and says: "I will avenge her death and become a much better person. No more overdue library books for me!"

[Mark Billingham]

Right...I'll check that one out straight away. Just so I'm clear, "Ulysses" is the one with the stuttering serial-killer and the exploding dog, right?

Mark

[Kevin Wignall]

I think you'll find you're getting your Joyce mixed up - the book you're looking for is "Portrait of the Artist as a Made Man". Scorcese has the film rights.

[Sandra Ruttan]

"I'm more interested in exploring unique aspects of an apparently familiar story or subverting reader expectations."

I think this is perhaps the best approach. If you try to push too far for a unique character, you can end up with one who reads false. But in the same situation, no two people are going to react the exact same way.

And certainly with how attitudes within society change over time, it can be more interesting to look at different dimensions to the story. I would have to say that's one of the things about Sleepyhead that made it stand out - going inside the mind of a woman who couldn't communicate with the world. Anne Frasier's Pale Immortal is an interesting read, which doesn't really have the investigation of the crimes as the main focus, but rather the impact of suspicion and doubt on the lives of those thought to be guilty. I've been reading a lot this month for reviews and edits, but that book has lingered with me.

[Mark Billingham]

While it's true that it can be risky to step outside that comfort zone, and that 'experimental' can occasionally mean 'self-indulgent', it has to be preferable to writing that seems riddled with cynicism. This morning I received a proof copy of a new novel that on the face of it seems an unashamedly blatant attempt to graft religious conspiracy thriller (ancient symbols, texts, mysteries etc etc) on to a modern serial-killer romp. Both those types of book do pretty well, so maybe if we combine the two we'll double the sales! And if it works, things will only get worse...

Right back to the new book. I don't suppose anyone knows the Ancient Aramaic for "He will kill again
soon... now he has a taste for it!"?

Mark

[David Thayer]

Somewhere between the "influence" that affects a writer and the execution of a book a distinctive voice emerges. A Rebecca Pawel novel, for example, or Cornelia Read couldn't be mistaken for anyone else. The cadence Kevin Wignall uses or Laura's stories are unique in a way that's very natural to them. Or so it seems to me.
Mark, I think the Armamaic quote is, "He'd better kill again or we're out of business."

[Cornelia Read]

I'm going to have to dig out my old Joyce crap. Never made it past "Scylla and Charybdis" in Ulysses.

The exploding dog sounds excellent: "Yes he panted yes he barked yes yes ye... KABOOM."

(black ostrich Belgian shoes, newly resoled. And thank you David...)

[Betty]

Hi from a reader's point of view, surely all writers are unique in that their thoughts are their own. As all music comes from the same 8 notes, surely books in general apart from sci-fi and fantasy come from real life. To each person their joy or sorrow is unique to them. Of course it's great that writers want to experiment within their own genre, but that dosen't make it better than what they normally write or more interesting. I read crime yes, to be entertained but also to read what other people think and feel about the given situations in that particular book. Its' amazing the different types of writers friends enjoy - uniqueness is a think their particular favourite writer has.

[Karin Montin]

Taking your theme more literally as referring to the narrative voice, I heartily agree with your choice of
Charlie Williams. Another unique voice in crime fiction is Jeremy Cameron, who's five books featuring petty criminal Nicky Burkett are written in a very convincing North London dialect.