The truth and untruth of crime fiction
Fiction is always lying its ass off.
I was out east for a bit, and ended up having a great conversation about writing with a friend of mine. He writes historical fiction with a literary (very) bent. He’s also a playwright, a very accomplished one. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what he thought of my crime novels. He’s a deep thinker and extremely well-read. Now, I never think I have to apologize or get defensive about my Fischer novels… still, I dunno, I was worried he didn’t see much there.
But then he hit me with something that has been ringing in my head for days,
“The great thing about crime fiction is that you are dealing with an equal measure of truth and untruth. They run parallel to each other.”
If I’d had a mic, I would have dropped it. Wow. Say that again. And he did.
When we got into it, all kinds of fires and explosions were going off in Craig’s writer-mind (so much so that he referred to himself in the third person.)
My friend, let’s call him Michael (because that’s his name), said that in his historical fiction he was always worried about “getting it right.” The way he described it led me to ask if that concept handcuffed him, writing-wise. He explained that yes it did.
Our conversation went all sorts of places, and I came away deeply inspired… as I usually do when we talk.
I often think of fiction as the great lie. And the better the liar, the better the writer, or more accurately, the storyteller. I create characters often out of thin air, though as Michael said, they are also all me. In some of my novels there are characters that are based on someone, or a few people are woven together like a folksy-quilt. Sometimes I can see the stitches. But when put through the lens of fiction these characters become someone else altogether. And they become real. Or that’s the hope. They are authentic, breathing, eating, sleeping, pissing, shooting… the fuck, I don’t know. You know what I mean!
For me, this is where I get into the truth and untruth. Stories are often full of unreliable narrators. The third-person POV get’s it wrong because they think they know what’s going on. And they are wrong. The first-person POV get’s it wrong because they are shutting off a piece of themselves that they won’t, or can’t, see. Look up the Johari Window sometime, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. So the characters are lying. And the writer (me) is lying about them lying. Everyone is lying. Dammit, even the dogs can’t be trusted.
Confused? Good. You should be. Writing is hard shit.
The untruth of the characters often plays into the plot (which I often say is simply character in action.)
Somebody famous, or smart, or both, said that every novel could be summed up with one phrase:
“Things are not what they seem.”
I love that. And I stole it for the new Fischer novel I’m currently working on.
So what, no one is telling the truth? Not quite. Truth is there, it has to be, or the reader would toss the book across the room. I might have done this to a certain Dan Brown book, but I will never admit that. The truth lies in what is revealed in the human condition. Oh shut up, that’s what it’s called.
There are certain writers, George Saunders and Jennifer Egan come to mind, that while I’m reading their work I stop and go, “How the hell do you know that?” I’ve said before that Egan is one of the few writers that make me gasp out loud. The gasp comes out of something that is very very true. It seems like a magic trick when it happens, except it’s not. I think both of these writers are two of the finest working today, and they are very committed to craft of writing the truth.
Our stories might start as big fat lies, but then the work begins. Like a guy in a woods that finds himself with a shovel and a treasure map (or a dead guy, you choose), he has to dig a deep hole to get to the stuff, or hide the body, or both. Huh?
Confused? Sure, why not. Writing is fucking hard.
This post is helping me figure stuff out dear reader. I love the dance between truth and untruth that Michael pointed out. In Three Minute Hero there’s lots of untruths flying around like shovels to the head. But at the same time, there is our hero trying to figure out what, and where, home is. Luke has a deep longing that he hides from himself. The untruth is the way he runs from it, never stares it in the face. But the truth is when he has to face it. He has no choice.
Here’s a phone conversation from the end of Three Minute Hero that gets at what I’m trying to articulate. Luke is talking to a woman who he met earlier in the book. (I don’t this spoils anything, so go ahead and read it… I mean, while you’re at it, just go buy the damn book!)
Here it is, after this line thing:
A long span of silence. I thought I made out a whistling noise, somewhere in her kitchen. I pictured it. The two of us drinking chamomile tea like normal people, considering going for a long walk in the red maples.
“You sound tired, Luke.”
“I’ve had some hard days. But I’ll be all right. Need to rest up, swim in the ocean.”
The song that was playing in the airport swelled in my ears. It could have been an auditory trick of the mind.
“This is the sound of my soul,” I said.
“What?”
“Nothing. I was just thinking of something.”
“You’re always thinking of something, Luke.”
“I just wanted to hear your voice.”
“They don’t have phones in Mexico?”
I let the warm water of her voice sink into me again. I was the low place.
“It was really good to see you,” I said.
She got quiet again. The space stretched out in front of us. The song was over, the whistling sound was gone.
“You need to rest. Go home.”
“I’m not sure where that is.”
I want to ponder this idea some more. Not in the way that it affects my first drafts. I do want those to be very subconscious driven. But then in subsequent drafts, I know I’ll be asking myself, where is the truth, and where is the untruth.
What do you think? Does crime fiction do this better than some other genres? I’m not sure. But something to think about while you are sipping your Pacifico.
My favorite thing about crime fiction is that it's a genre where the majority of characters are centered around self preservation. The number one priority is to walk out of this situation with the upper hand, or at the very least -- alive.
There are certainly characters who are bound to duty, ideology, and what-have-you, but one thing crime fiction really captures is the primal sense of self-preservation at the center of each human. If confronted with a gunman, most people would give up any loyalty or ideological bent, and do/say whatever it takes to walk out of that room alive. (Better yet if you can find a way to procure means of future survival -- i.e., money for food and shelter.) People who will actually die for loyalty and ideas are few and far between.
And to tie this back into the article, all crime fiction deals with liars to some extent. People lying to cover their asses, or cover the ass of someone they care about. Especially if life or money is on the line, you're better off assuming characters in crime fiction are lying. Everybody has something to hide, after all.
I wouldn't say we (writer/characters) are lying, per se. It's more "make believe" and when you do that, the line between true and untrue gets very fuzzy.