Annotating Stanley Fish

Today's op-ed by Stanley Fish, the Davidson-Kahn professor of law at Florida International University, is behind the New York TimesSelect Wall, so I've decided to reprint it in full and annotate where necessary:

You’re at the mystery section of an airport bookstore and the loudspeaker has just announced that your flight is in the late stages of boarding. You have maybe three or four minutes to make a choice. (That is your assignment, if you choose to accept it.) How do you go about deciding? (quickly, frantically, trying too hard to calm down while knowing that's nearly impossible)

Look at the back cover? No, back-cover copy is written by an advertising flack who probably hasn’t read the book (or a marketing assistant, or an editor or even - gasp! - the author!) and is trying for something short and punchy like (and I will be making none of this up) “As unpredictable as trade winds” or “It couldn’t get any worse. Until it does.” Besides, rarely will the style of back-cover prose be anything like the style of the book itself, so reading it won’t tell you what you want to know. Depending on your taste, it might tell you something usefully negative. The moment I spot a reference to any country but this one, I move on. No international settings for me. (More's the pity.) Ditto for any promise that the book I am holding will be funny. Funny is for sitcoms and stand-up comedians. When it comes to mysteries, I’m a Matthew Arnold guy, all for high seriousness. (Ditto.)

How about the blurbs, especially if a few of your favorites are touting the merits of an author new to you? I used to take direction from blurbs until I told a very famous mystery writer (because the writer can't just be "famous", you know) that he was right to have praised a book I had bought on his authority. He replied that he didn’t remember it, probably hadn’t read it, and was no doubt doing a favor for his publisher. Members of that club, it seems, pass blurbs out to each other like party favors. (But not like you're actually going to bother doing any research to confirm that. This is an op-ed, after all!)

The only thing left — and this is sure-fire — is to read the first sentence. The really bad ones leap out at you. Here’s one that has the advantage of being short (you can close the book quickly): “He cut through the morning rush-hour crowd like a shark fin through water.” Enough said. (Really? I quite enjoyed RAIN FALL, but guess Fish won't be a Barry Eisler fan anytime soon.) Here’s one that begins O.K., except for the heroine’s name, but then goes on a beat and a half too long: “Brianne Parker didn’t look like a bank robber or a murderer — her pleasantly plump baby face fooled everyone.” (Seeing as this is from James Patterson's ROSES ARE RED, I guess I wonder about Fish's assertion that he's going for "all seriousness.") You don’t need the stuff after the dash. Brianne’s not looking like a murderer is the hook that draws you in to find out why she is one. The “pleasantly plump baby face” bit lets you off the hook and dumps you on a cliché, which might be all right if the author gave any sign of knowing that it was one. This guy is going to hit false notes for 300 pages, but I won’t be listening.

Sometimes a first sentence is bad because it’s pretentious. “Some stories wait to be told.” (Damn, can't identify this one.) That’s an opening Tolstoy or Jane Austen might have considered (although they would have produced superior versions of it). But mystery writers usually aren’t Tolstoys or Austens, and a first sentence like this one is a signal (buyer beware) that the author is intent on contemplating his or her “craft” and wants you to contemplate it too. No thanks. (Or perhaps more indicative of the op-ed writer's pretentiousness, but hey.)

Time is running out, the doors will soon be closing. Here’s something much better: “Stromose was in high school when he met the boy who would someday murder his wife and son.” High marks for compression, information and what I call the “angle of lean.” A good first sentence knows about everything that will follow it and leans forward with great force, taking you with it. As you read this one you already want to find out (a) what was the relationship between the two in high school (b) what happened that turned a “boy” into a murderer, and (c) what sequence of events led to his murdering these particular people? The only thing wrong is that the author is as impressed with the sentence as he wants you to be; it is written with a snap and a click of self-satisfaction. (And you know this how? Did you ask T. Jefferson Parker? Or perhaps Mr. Fish is impressed with his own acumen at rejecting books outright. How nice.)

And here, finally, is the real thing, efficient, dense, and free of self-preening: “Joel Campbell, eleven years old at the time, began his descent into murder with a bus ride.” The name is nicely cadenced and sounds serious; “eleven years old at the time” takes the seriousness away, but it comes back with a vengeance and with a question: descent into murder, how did that happen? The answer — “with a bus ride” — only deepens the mystery, and we’re off. And look, the book is big and fat. Sold. (And you poor, poor thing, getting exactly what you deserve. Hope you had a nice flight!)

Once again, one man's attempt at humor only displays how deeply unfunny - and inherently prejudicial - he really is.

Comments

[PJ Parrish]

I read this piece this morning and my first thought was that the Times must be pretty hard up for guest op-ed writers these days. But the tagline beneath the column said "Maureen Dowd is on vacation" so maybe they were looking for a stand-in book critic. She did her mindless trashing of chick lit and now they're going after the other genres with just as much insight. As for the good professor, I can only quote that great observer of modern culture, Bugs Bunny: "What a maroon."

[Robert Gregory Browne]

"the snap and click of self-satisfaction."

I'm always amused by critics who seem to think they can read an author's mind simply by what the author has put on the page.

As for his dislike of humor in mystery novels, looks like he just cut out at least a third of Donald Westlake's output...

[Jersey Jack]

I didn't read the professor's whole column because his first sentence sucked.

[David J. Montgomery]

This piece is a perfect example of why it's better to be an op-ed columnist than a critic. You don't even have to read the books in order to make fun of them. Genius!

I'm giddy thinking of how high my productivity would climb if I could just cut out the reading of all these books.

(And maybe I'm a blockhead, but it seems like the sentence he chose as his favorite is the most pretentious of the lot.)

[Steve Allan]

Someone who isn't familiar with Barry Eisler, T. Jefferson Parker or James Patterson, and doesn't know which book might be good by the writers' reputations shouldn't write about crime fiction.

[Steven]

There was the story of Mr. Fish trying to force guards at Columbia Univ. to open the basketball court at some ungodly hour by jumping up and down and shouting that he was, in fact, "STANLEY FISH!"

I didn't like the Patterson sentence for the reason he gave, but the others seemed quite nice. Didn't get the last reference though...

[Tim Maleeny]

Note to self...never ask that guy for a book recommendation...in any genre.

[Don]

In answer to Steve Torres's question: "Elizabeth George's all-backstory, all-the-time novel WHAT CAME BEFORE HE SHOT HER." (From Sarah's October 29, 2006 entry.)

[Bella Stander]

I rather enjoyed Fish's piece, though as a recovering copy editor I disagree with him as to the near-perfection of “Stromose was in high school when he met the boy who would someday murder his wife and son.” He's right on about what a first sentence should do.

See my blog post about this: "Life (or Death) Sentence & Pronoun Abuse" at http://readingunderthecovers.blogspot.com/2007/03/life-or-death-sentence-pronoun-abuse.html#links

[Keith]

From your willingness to post copyrighted material that the owner wished to charge for, I assume that you wouldn't mind if your own writing was stolen and shared with the world at no profit to yourself?

[James C. Mitchell]

When I read Fish's piece this morning, something about the reference to "Storm Runners" bothered me. Finally got it. Fish, for all his fussiness, managed to misspell the hero's name. Bad pedant!

[Steven Turnbull]

"Some stories must wait to be told" = Turning Angel by Greg Iles.

[Donna]

I love first lines - sometimes they may not be borne out by the rest of the book, but a good first line always attracts me. A couple of my favourites (which are also from GREAT books):

Victor Gischler's GUN MONKEYS
"I turned the Chrysler onto the florida Turnpike with Rollo Kramer's headless body in the trunk, and all the time I'm thinking I should have put some plastic down."

James Crumley's LAST GOOD KISS:

"When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon."

Donna

[Jeff Cohen]

Thank goodness Stanley Fish has shown me the error of my ways: he's right! There SHOULD be no humor in mysteries! Boy, does that take a load off my mind--now I don't have to write the two remaining books on my contract, and I can finally retire and see the world. Of course, without the advance money, I'll only be able to see the world as far as Hoboken, but I sure am grateful to old Stanley, who has eliminated an entire subgenre simply because he doesn't care for it much.

[Barbara Fister]

"The last time I stayed at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington was to see Dinesh D'Souza get married, and here I was coming to a Federalist Society meeting at which Dinesh, now under seige from some of his former allies ..."

Sorry, I can't be bothered typing the whole sentence. It goes on for an entire paragraph that one might call Faulkneresque except that Faulkner didn't write like that. This is the first line of Stanley Fish's book, The Trouble With Principle.

I think everything after the word "the" is unnecessary. On second thought, scratch "the."