Banville, Slip-Ups and ‘Slumming It’ by Writing Genre Fiction

Max Allan Collins is in hot water at our house this week.

Recent comments by Banville/Black at Harrogate have caused a bit of a stir in the crime fiction community, so much so that major UK newspapers have reported on the controversy. It seems Banville (appearing as Black) said something that offended some of the people attending the festival.

Declan Burke and Sarah Weinman chimed in and fanned the flames. Within days, Banville had responded. His comments were dubbed “kind of awesome” by Sarah Weinman, although I must admit I didn’t share that impression. Did anyone really expect him to respond and say, “Yes, I am slumming it” and have that published by The Guardian?

Ruth Dudley Edwards has since responded via Declan Burke’s blog, and it’s possible this may be the end of the matter.

Which is sad. All of these words, all of these posts, all of the great minds and knowledgeable people chiming in, and it seems nobody has extracted the practical application from all of this and underscored it for the writers out there.

This brings me back to why Max Allan Collins’s name has been mud around here lately. It all started when Brian read a comment by Mr. Collins, regarding Pynchon’s latest, over at The Big Adios. Regarding Pynchon’s Inherent Vice, Collins said:

“I say it’s spinach and I say to hell with it. Another slumming literary boy.”

No doubt, a reference to the Banville/Black controversy. Since I don’t know Mr. Collins, I can only speculate on his intent. It’s possible to interpret the comment as a joke, a way of poking fun at the latest scandal. It’s also possible to see it as unqualified scorn, directed at literary writers.

Further down the thread, Mr. Collins contributes a second remark. “Start with CATCH 22 and skip Pynchon.” Now, it would seem that the latter interpretation is more probable.

The remark really rubbed Brian the wrong way, from day one. Listening to him rant about this was what made me start connecting it to the Banville/Black situation, and it reinforced in my mind the point everyone failed to miss from the controversy over Banville’s comments and how they were interpreted.

Whatever you say, whatever you write, it can give people the wrong impression. As writers we should know the value of our words. We should know the importance. Whenever I told my ex-husband about the latest argument within the crime fiction community he used to say, “For a bunch of writers, you guys are pretty bad at expressing yourselves clearly.”

Yes, we are.

If you go on a panel and say something, you run the risk of it being misinterpreted. You have to be careful about compounding any offense given by insulting said audience and suggesting that interpreting the statement in the manner they have is ridiculous. (Then you really have insulted the intelligence of your audience, and abdicated all responsibility for misspeaking.)

Last year, at Bouchercon, Brian and I were attending a panel and one of the authors said they don’t read mysteries. I murmured under my breath, “Uh oh” as a number of people in the audience gasped and scowled. In fairness, we felt the author considered his books to be comedies, not mysteries, but it was extremely clear from his response that he didn’t grasp the potential to offend his audience.

Why should it matter if mystery writers read mysteries, you ask? Mystery readers want to know who your influences were. Some look to their favourite writers for referrals for new authors they should try. To dismiss an entire genre with a blanket statement runs the risk of suggesting you think you’re too good to read the genre, and that could bother people in the audience.

And they have the right to be bothered. After all, most of the people who attend these festivals and conventions spend hundreds, if not thousands, to fly across the country or the world, stay in a hotel, pay the registration fee, and take their holiday time so that they can hear the authors speak in person. They’re amongst the most devoted fans of the genre in the world, and since they’re willing to invest so much money and time in the genre they love, they might take it seriously.

There’s nothing wrong with that. The people sitting in the audience aren’t the problem.

As writers, it helps if we know our audience when we’re writing, and it is extremely helpful if we know our audience when we’re speaking at an event. (This is part of the reason I attended events before I had a publishing contract.) If you’re on a panel and make a comment and it’s misinterpreted that’s your fault. It is your job, as a speaker, to express yourself clearly. It is no the audience’s job to read your mind or even give you the benefit of the doubt.

Perhaps my own remarks will be seen as uncharitable or impatient with Mr. Banville, but this isn’t the first time he’s sparked controversy within the genre. In 2008, in an interview Banville said:

“Now, looking back I think the invention of Benjamin Black was John Banville’s ploy to find his way out of what was suspiciously like a rut. I took the pseudonym to indicate that the venture was not an elaborate, post-modernist, literary joke. It is straightforward. I simply discovered I had this facility for cheap fiction.”

And I’m not supposed to wonder if he really actually might believe he’s slumming it? When he says himself he’s discovered, through the Black persona, he has a facility for cheap fiction?

I think at some point, if authors are going to be on panels/give interviews/participate in the community, they need to take the time to understand the community they’re addressing.

Brian put down one of Black’s books and hasn’t had any interest in trying it again, so to date, it’s a DNF for him. Black’s been pushed as a literary writer, and instigated a few controversies in the community, and none of that makes me particularly interested in his books. I never hear about content, about the story, about captivating characters… just literary writer turned crime novelist, and that holds no special appeal for me. During the writers’ strike we received a lot of submissions from screenwriters, and we rejected almost all of them, because characters and setting were often underdeveloped. There’s nothing wrong with being a screenwriter; it requires a different set of writing muscles from novel writing. The same is true for genre writing and literary writing. None are better or worse, just because of their label, but within all the categories there will be works that are great and there will be works that are garbage.

I haven’t read Black because I haven’t heard anything to date about any of the books that’s sparked my interest.

We live in a small world, and everything we say and do has the power to offend. I don’t particularly care if you were offended by what Black said, and I don’t particularly care if you weren’t.

What I do care about is the fact that every year, new writers sit on panels for the first time, people cross genres and are drawn into a new community, and they either aren’t given advice or don’t take it. I think it’s possible Banville may have discovered that poking a hornet’s nest gets him press coverage, and I do think it’s too bad, because I’d rather hear about writers getting coverage for their work. As writers our focus should be on the work, not kicking up a controversy to get our names in the press.

Sadly, though, I must admit if I want to keep publishing books perhaps I should reverse my priorities and think of a way to generate a controversy that will get me a lot of mileage in the media. Welcome to the age of bad fiction, not because we celebrate that as a genre, but because the biggest push, the most press given, seems to be to the shit storms rather than the superb writing and storytelling.