What turns a good joke into a good story?

I asked that question Friday on Facebook, and some fascinating replies ensued. I wanted to know how crime writers make a story work despite an improbable conceit, and also how they make their stories something more than nonstop yukfests.

Garbhan Downey, whose novels and stories about Derry in Northern Ireland I've written about often, said: "I just watch the news, then dial it back to something more plausible."

John McFetridge, whose crime novels set in Montreal and Toronto are unmatched in their seamless combination of story, history, and character, has this to say about the wild Christopher Brookmyre: "Lots of humor and some improbable conceits but they do work. Very good character development is the reason why, I think."

David Magayna, a big wheel behind Bouchercons, says: "I'd recommend Lawrence Shames and Carl Hiaasen. I believe they make their stories work because among all the absurdity there is enough truth about human nature. ... I think those who do it well, blend it in with the natural elements of the story: plot, setting, character development. I don't think they lead with humor, but incorporate it where they can."

"Plot," said David Biemann, to which McFetridge responded, "Yes, I think the plot is important, too. Brookmyre is very good at grounding his characters and plots in mostly believable, everyday stuff so the more improbable conceits don't overwhelm the book."

Mary Harris had this to say about Donald Westlake's Dortmunder novels: "The characters, hapless ones in Westlake's case, react to ridiculous situations in a way they think is normal."

Travis Richardson mentioned Jim Thompson's great novel Pop. 1280, about which I added that "Everyone mentions Jim Thompson's nightmare visions, but no one seems to talk about his dark, dark humor. What sets Thompson's psychopaths apart is the deadpan way in which they think themselves normal. That can be pretty funny."

Elsewhere on this blog, I call Pop. 1280 "Dark, hilarious, a stunning performance that sustains its mood in every word, far and away the best of Thompson's work that I've read." So, good choice, Travis.

I asked the question for a personal reason. Several years ago I encountered a series of sights around which I built an improbable and entertaining situation without, however, thinking about turning into a story. Where was the conflict that could turn the funny situation into a funny story? What makes the result a story rather than a drawn-out SNL sketch? The e-mail part of this discussion got me started on the story, and the comments here and on Facebook will stay with me as I write. It gets published, and you'll all get acknowledgments. Thanks, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and enjoy the season.

© Peter Rozovsky 2016

What's with the pish? and other linguistic miscellany

Events have turned my mind toward language and its uses.

First, the good people at St. Martin's/Minotaur Books sent Inspector Ghote's First Case, a prequel to H.R.F. Keating's long-running series. Then a discussion here turned to the odd happenings when speakers of one language appropriate speech patterns from another. Finally a piece of Scottish slang reminded me of a treasured word from my un-Scottish youth.

As I did when I first read Keating, I noticed in the opening chapters of Inspector Ghote's First Case a speech pattern in which characters use only at the end of a sentence where North American or European speakers would use it in the middle. It transpired that at least one Indian critic had been ambivalent about Keating and unhappy with Ghote's "broken-English patois." You can follow the ensuing discussion here and here.

In the meantime, some questions for readers with knowledge of English as spoken in India: Is only in the end position ("I have been longing to see it since I was at college only.") particular to certain regions of India? And could that speech pattern be a carryover from any of India's own languages?

Finally, pish. The word was part of my youth growing up, a holdover, I assumed, from Yiddish. But it must be part of the Scottish lexicon, too. Christopher Brookmyre has used it in his books, and Allan Guthrie uses it several times in Two-Way Split, most pungently thus:

"Kennedy chucked the paper in the bin, since the journalist was obviously from the west coast and therefore everything he said was unadulterated pish."

OK, lovers of Scottish English. What's with the pish? How did it get into your language?

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Brookmyre pro, Brookmyre con

Pro:

I want to shake Christopher Brookmyre's hand for this, from A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away:

"`They're already in briefings down there. Look, you've done a hell of a job. Lexington asked me to ...'

"Angelique stopped listening when he slipped into autopatronise ..."

Con:

Brookmyre, the book's copy editor or both should have consulted a dictionary before letting the following go to press:

"Mitigating against that was the fact that they had comped him three grammes of uncut smack ... "

The correct word is militating.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

More on Christopher Brookmyre's attitudes

Read long enough, and you'll answer your own questions. Yesterday I wondered about the haughtily dismissive first-chapter narrator in Christopher Brookmyre's A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away. Did this narrator's withering criticism of suburbs reflect Brookmyre's views, in which case it would be fair to accuse the author of taking pot shots at an easy target? Or was the staleness Brookmyre's jab at the narrator's snarkiness and lack of imagination?

I got my answer three hundred pages later in a section narrated by another, more sympathetic character:

"Ray didn't fancy the place much himself back then. but wasn't so dismissive now. ... There were lots of kids playing on the pavements, bikes left unguarded outside front doors, garages open invitingly to reveal toys, garden swings and washer/driers. It was very `choose life' and twee to the point of smug, but was also obvious that crime and fear didn't stalk the place either."

Whatever Brookmyre's feelings about suburbs, suburbs of Aberdeen in particular (and perhaps that "twee to the point of smug" is a clue), he recognizes they can have appeal, and he uses this appeal to effective dramatic purpose, heightening the contrast between a villain and a relatively innocent victim.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away

I'm trying to think myself into an author's mind on this. When a writer has a narrator heap scorn in the Christopher Brookmyre manner, does he sometimes reserve a dose of scorn for that narrator?

The first of several targets in Brookmyre's novel A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away is suburbia and its aspirations. Some of the barbs are funny. Trouble is, suburbia is such an easy target, which takes a bit of the edge off such lines as "Dear Lord, protect us from uniqueness. Grant unto us eternal conformity, and deliver us from distinction. Amen."

That seems — not unsubtle, because subtlety is not what one looks for in Brookmyre, but perhaps stale for a book published in 2001. Popular artists have been poking fun at the suburbs for decades, after all. Or maybe suburbs never caught on as a target for popular condescension and satire in Europe the way they did in the U.S. Or maybe, just maybe, Brookmyre means to tell us that the narrator in question is not the boldest and most incisive of social critics.

OK, point settled. On suburbia, A Big Boy Did It ... is no "Pleasant Valley Sunday." But that's just a quibble, and the suburban pot shots are just a warm-up for Brookmyre's bigger targets and funnier lines. Here's my favorite of the latter so far:

"Artro's geopolitical knowledge didn't extend very far beyond Russia being the Great Satan and the US being the Great Satan as well, and it was widely rumoured that he'd gone on the lam to Finland in the disastrously mistaken belief that Scandinavia was an entirely autonomous continent, political separate from Europe. That said, misapprehension wouldn't necessarily have led to apprehension if he'd followed the first rule of lying low, which is to lie low."

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Christopher Brookmyre is righteous

Midway through Christopher Brookmyre's Quite Ugly One Morning, protagonist/reporter/burglar-for-good-reasons Jack Parlabane muses upon the executive jargon at a hospital he has infiltrated under false but noble pretenses:

"Parlabane found the word `pro-active' enormously useful, as it immediately exposed the speaker as an irredeemable arsehole, whatever previous impression might have been given. Once upon a time, he remembered, people and companies just did things. But that ceased to be impressive enough, and for a while they `actively' did things. Now they `pro-actively' did things, but it was still the same bloody things that they were doing when they just plain old did things. Meaningless wank-language. Every time he heard it he imagined George Orwell doing another 360 down below."

That brought back the crushing sense of abandonment I felt the first time I heard an editor use impact as a verb. Wanker.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Andrea Camilleri's politics get personal, plus a question for readers

It's nice to see a crime writer let the satirical arrows fly without pretense of diplomacy. Shane Maloney does this, and Christopher Brookmyre does not know the meaning of the word restraint, which is part of the reason he's fun to read.

But neither Maloney nor Brookmyre is as direct as Andrea Camilleri in The Paper Moon, ninth novel in the Salvo Montalbano series:

"During the horrific hurricane `Clean Hands,' he had turned into a submarine, navigating underwater by means of periscope alone. He resurfaced only when he'd sighted the possibility of casting anchor in a safe port – the one just constructed by a former Milanese real-estate speculator-cum-owner of the top three private nationwide television stations-cum parliamentary deputy, head of his own personal political party, and finally prime minister."

That is in the spirit of the passages from Maloney and Brookmyre to which I linked above, but neither zeroes in on an individual the way Camilleri does on Silvio Berlusconi. Even the Brookmyre is about Thatcherism and its publicists rather than about Margaret Thatcher herself.

There is something bracing about satire so clearly directed at a particular powerful person. And that, readers, leads to your question: Who else does what Camilleri does? Which crime stories are not only satirical but aim their barbs at a particular individual?

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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Andrea Camilleri
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Good names for bad guys

Christopher Brookmyre named one of his villains Stephen Lime. That's a good name for at least two reasons. It echoes the name of Harry Lime, villain of the Carol Reed/Graham Greene movie classic The Third Man. Indeed, the two Limes practice related forms of villainy.

The name is good also because of what happens when you reduce the first part to an initial. The result describes its bearer well and is all the funnier because the reader shares the pleasure of getting the joke.

What are your favorite character names, be they appropriate for the character, over the top in the manner of Dickens, or as much of a hoot as Brookmyre's S. Lime?

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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Christopher Brookmyre

Crime fiction and unfortunate events

I’ve rhapsodized about Frank McAuliffe and his three amazing books about Augustus Mandrell, that sly international spy and master of disguise who must nonetheless work for a living. But did you know a fourth Mandrell book, never published, predates the others? Its title is They Shoot Presidents, Don’t They?, and when I tell you that McAuliffe apparently submitted it to his publisher not long before Nov. 22, 1963, the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated, you may understand its failure to appear. (Read this enlightening account and this discussion about the astonishing, brash, satirical and very funny Mandrell series.)

Thirty-eight years later, just before Sept. 11, 2001, the acidically satirical Christopher Brookmyre published A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away, one of whose characters is a terrorist who blows up a plane. Brookmyre’s own Web site breaks down critical reaction to the novel into “Pre September 11th” and “Post September 11th” groups, and it’s natural to wonder how the terrorist attacks affected the novel’s popular and critical reception.

Each author ran full speed, smack-dab, face first and unaware into a historical event beyond his control. What other crime authors have experienced similar tricks of fate?

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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The morals of Christopher Brookmyre’s story, plus a question for readers

The author of Boiling a Frog is a moralist. He pokes ruthless fun at obtuse and hypocritical Catholic leaders. He writes with spitting and sometimes hysterically funny contempt for image-driven, lying New Labourites, vicious, selfish, lying Conservatives, and the irrelevant Scottish National Party. All are far more concerned about their own preservation, he tells us, than they are about the people whom is it ostensibly their job or sacred duty to help.

More than Brookmyre’s biting humor, though, the fates of the characters point up what the author is up to. Everyone in this book is a scapegrace or worse, and everyone gets what he or she deserves.

Brookmyre’s outraged morality is finely calibrated: There are the purely evil characters, who have no qualms about what they do, and there are those burdened with the knowledge that they act wrongly. Within the latter group, those who obey their scruples and redeem themselves with a good deed are rewarded, and those who disregard their scruples suffer. This holds true for everyone from … well, no spoilers here, but read the book, then tote up the score yourself. Redemption (I choose this word carefully) depends not on what the characters think, no matter how sincerely they may think it, but on what they do.

I wrote earlier that Boiling a Frog broke rules with its lengthy expositions. Don’t ask me to provide examples, but those lengthy passages seemed almost a product of the nineteenth century, when the “show, don’t tell” rule was unheard of. The moral aspect is reminiscent of the eighteenth century. Though the contrast with the novel’s title might be jarring, this book could well bear the subtitle Virtue Rewarded.

And now the question for you, readers. It has been said that crime fiction’s appeal lies in its creation of a world in which wrongs are righted and order at least partly restored. Is this accurate?
===================================

From Boiling a Frog:

"You remember the Tories and `the economic miracle’ of the Eighties?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember an economic miracle taking place in the Eighties?”

“Eh. No, not really. Far from it, in fact.”

“Exactly. They got the phrase into the press and into the public mind. And, even smarter, they did it in the past tense … They referred so often to something as having happened that everyone began to believe it had. … Boom. Word association: Eighties, Thatcher, Economic Miracle. It replaced Eighties, Thatcher, Unemployment.”

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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Christopher Brookmyre breaks a rule ...

... and it's a big one, too. I don't mean the rule that says never build a humorous scene around bodily functions. In fact, bodily functions take second place to a misplaced vibrator and slip in just ahead of a broken ankle and a string of double entendres in the scene in question, from Brookmyre's novel Boiling a Frog.

No, the rule is that which enjoins authors to show rather than tell. An early scene between a pair of political minders breaks off for a lengthy flashback on the life, philosophy and political predicament of one of them. That's ten pages in which conversation comes to a halt, and action stops. It's a daringly long piece of back story, especially in a genre normally built around plot.

But the flashback, even if surprising and a bit worrisome at first, works on at least two levels. First, parts are bitingly funny:

"There was no more selfish urge in the human condition than sexual desire, and therefore no urge more capable of compromising all other moral considerations. In a sense, it brought out the little Tory bastard in everyone. It was about me, me, me: ego-driven individualism, id-driven indulgence, and it didn't care who got hurt, neglected or abandoned in the process."

I would hope that even incensed Conservative readers give Brookmyre credit for the virtuoso feat of turning sexual license, a sin of the Left in contemporary political demonology, into a defining vice of the Right.

Second, the flashback goes a long way to setting up a tension Elspeth Doyle, the political fixer whose life and opinions it recounts. Brookymyre does not wait long before exploiting that tension for narrative effect when Doyle meets the man at the center of the bodily-functions scene with which this discussion began.

I'll have more to say later, but for now, I'll leave off with a line typical of Brookymyre's wicked humor and also of Scottish crime fiction's tendency, as raised by a comment on this blog, to use the sports team a character roots for as an indicator of his or her social position. This time it's Jack Parlabane, Brookmyre's scapegrace journalist of a protagonist, who finds himself in jail and, to his surprise, feeling briefly like his criminal cellmate who is, incidentally, a Catholic:

"Don't be a prick, he told himself. At this rate, within a week he'd be planning his next 'job.' A fortnight and he's have a Rangers tattoo."

A question to readers: What other crime fiction writers breaks the "rules"? Does the rule-breaking work?

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

Technorati tags:
Christopher Brookmyre
Scottish crime fiction
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