by Cindy Orr
I’ve been struck lately by articles on “literary authors” who have adopted the mystery genre. These articles are based around the publication of Thomas Pynchon’s new crime book–Inherent Vice. The piece in the Wall Street Journal says some hardcore Pynchon fans are upset that his new book is “lightweight.”
Pynchon’s body of work is small, including V (1963), The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), Vineland (1990), Mason & Dixon (1997), and Against the Day (2006) in addition to the new title. He is known for dense, complex books which are filled with erudite information from many fields. His best known work—Gravity’s Rainbow—won the National Book Award, and was recommended unanimously for the Pulitzer, but the jury was overruled by the Pulitzer Board, which called the book “unreadable,” “turgid,” “overwritten,” and “obscene.” No prize was given that year.
So now he’s writing in the noir tradition. What does it all mean? Newsweek asserts that “literary novelists, the very people who usually scorn genre writing, have been slumming with noir for the better part of a century.” Some who have written in the genre include William Faulkner (Sanctuary) and Theodore Dreiser (An American Tragedy), Norman Mailer (Tough Guys Don’t Dance), Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men), and Denis Johnson (Nobody Move).
So what happens when literary authors try to write noir? Nothing good usually. As Newsweek reports it–it’s not the mechanics that make it good, it’s the emotional core of the story that needs to ring true. And that’s not as easy as some “A-List” authors might think. The bottom line—try these writers instead—”Writers such as James Ellroy, Richard Price, Dennis Lehane, Donald Westlake, Walter Mosley, Laura Lippman, James Sallis, Megan Abbott, and George Pelecanos have managed to infuse crime novels with a quality of writing not seen since the days of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain.”
