A short while ago Lee Child, the former British ad man, appeared on an interview with Charlie Rose and reasoned why his creation Jack Reacher couldn’t change. He simply couldn’t have the foibles of regular people because his fans would be disappointed. They were paying for a product and expected that product to be as advertised.

At the same time, a writer from a mystery group I subscribe to tried to convince me that that was the nature of genre. You don’t mess with stuff like second thoughts or misgivings because readers won’t stand for it. They want action. They want progression. They want something happening from the get-go with nothing in-between.

Interesting enough, Sir Ben Kingsley appeared on Tavis Smiley’s show and spent a great deal of time saying the exact opposite. Stories were meaningless unless, in between scenes of action, characters’ dilemmas, struggles and all that made them human and understandable were revealed. Otherwise no one would and be able to relate to what’s going on, let alone care. It would tell us nothing about “the human dance.” Stories that don’t deal with what lies beneath are just more escapism for its own sake.

Now wouldn’t it be something if Dan Brown caught this interview and had a complete change of heart? And began sketching in a moment like this:

In the dream, Robert Langdon saw himself running again, always running. A beautiful woman tagging along at his beck and call . . . an ally who would betray him . . . neo Nazi thugs shooting at him . . . a villainess riding an upscale Swedish motorbike tormenting him . . . a shadowy nemesis about to spin the world out of control . . .
                                                                                                                                                 Then he woke with a start. Why was it always the same? In truth he could never go running off willy-nilly. He had responsibilities. He was a Harvard professor with students who were counting on him. His friends and colleagues were counting on him. Granted Elaine his research assistant was rather good looking. But she would never just tag along. She was intelligent and had integrity. His dreams were more fantasy, more wish fulfillment night after night. But why couldn’t he take this as a sign he could actually do some good in this world? Perhaps induce Elaine to help him encrypt those Chechen messages to the Tsarnaev brothers he’d inadvertently intercepted. Prevent more terrorist attacks. Yes yes, he’ll do that right after this morning’s lecture. If only he could get her to stop being so standoffish.

Just a thought.    

Speaking of heroes and villains

 

On the Crime Fiction site, Jean Henry Mead recently initiated a discussion using the key word villain.

What immediately came to mind was the companion word hero, old school, summer blockbuster movies and, of course, the latest from Dan Brown.

Admittedly I had just finished reading a feature article in The New Yorker outlining why the old detective stories were no longer relevant and the jaded South Florida novels of Carl Hiaasen were. As a former Miami Newspaper man he’s blatantly showing us what used to pass for morality is a thing of the past. Corruption, senseless violence and pure chance are now simply taken for granted. No longer can a man who was not himself mean course the mean streets and sun-drenched environs out to right some great wrong. No longer can a heroine seek any satisfactory closure. (After all, Kinsey Millhone is a gumshoe out of the early 1980s.)

As it happens, at the same time Chuck Klosterman just came out with a book on villainy. Straining to be as with-it and ironic as possible, his list includes anyone who wrote a satanic bible, celebrity gossip villainy, heroic villainy, pop villainy and rock bands that are villainously bad.

Then I discovered even the summer blockbusters are fraught with ambivalence. In the movie The Man of Steel we find a lady extraterrestrial from Krypton beating up Superman, telling him he’s weak because he hasn’t evolved and is stuck with a conscience. Since everything is relevant, she’s perfectly happy helping to wipe out earth in order to establish a new Krypton out of the ashes. We’re told The Lone Ranger is doing so poorly at the box office because no one under the age of 70 can recall the days when a masked man in a white hat rode the plains with his faithful Indian companion in search of truth and justice. It seems we know far too much about the actual plight of Native Americans, the settling of the West and so forth. Even when the movie tries to have it both ways and makes fun of the cliché’s of the 1930s and 40s, most viewers find themselves at a loss.         

However, back to Dan Brown. When interviewed on the Charlie Rose TV show, while underscoring his sure-fire formula—a code-breaker and his attractive sidekick on the run, betrayed by an ally, shot at by neo-Nazi thugs; the intrepid duo our only hope against a  nefarious global conspiracy and arch nemesis brandishing a Dante death mask—I couldn’t help wondering.

Is he on to something? Is there some underlying paranoia at work here? Plus some belief in the forces of good and evil he feels so many readers share?

And on a much more plausible level, can you be relevant and send characters out there who know full well what they’re up against but are still, as they used to say, willing to give it their all?