Maybe not if you're a genre writer, according to some.
One of the more interesting skirmishes going on in the literary world right now is over the question of genre vs literary fiction. In a September interview in the The Guardian, Booker Prize-winner Howard Jacobson took a vigorous slash at genre fiction, and now we have Arthur Krystal in the Oct 24 issue of The New Yorkerexplaining the difference between genre and literary fiction and coming down firmly on the side of the latter as being the only one with artistic merit. That people still get their knickers in a twist over this issue is one matter (I partially discuss that topic here), but what's interesting about the Krystal article is that it reveals some of the weaknesses in the arguments for a clear divide between genre and literary fiction.
First off, Krystal makes the mistake (as does Jacobson) of taking a narrow view of what constitutes genre fiction. He describes genre as books that are "born to sell" and that "...employ language that is at best undistinguished and at worst characterized by a jejune mentality and a tendency to state the obvious." Without naming names, Krystal seems to be referring to writers like Danielle Steel, Lee Child and J.K. Rowling. The problem is that no one is claiming these kinds of mega-selling authors are producing quality fiction. What proponents of genre fiction are saying is that just because a book falls within an easily defined genre it should not be ignored or automatically assumed to be the product of a second-rate writer. Krystal's prejudices are very much on view when he says, "When we open a mystery, we expect certain themes to be addressed and we enjoy intelligent variations on these themes. But what we don't expect is excellence in writing..." As illogical statements go, that's a doozy. It's a writer's skill and imagination that determines excellence in writing, not the genre they've chosen. Saying genre overrules talent would be like saying a great architect's status is determined by what's contained in the buildings he's designed. According to Krystal's logic, a Frank Gehry-designed museum would be art, but if he designs a condo tower it's just a pile of bricks and mortar.
Krystal also avoids dealing with the fact that the line between literary fiction and genre is often so thin it's not worth arguing about. Is Moby-Dick an adventure story or literary fiction? Is Metamorphosis sci-fi or literary fiction? Is The Little Stranger supernatural fiction or literary fiction? The answer to all three is both. Aside from novels that are purely about psychological insight and analysis (and there aren't a lot of those), the majority of literary fiction incorporates some kind of mystery, adventure or quest, something that knocks the protagonist out of his usual routine and thereby reveals something new about his world and his character. The mystery might be as prosaic as why a wife ran off with her lover, and the quest might be going on the road to win back her love. My point is that novels, literary or genre, are almost always about a rupture in quotidian life. The difference between literary and genre fiction in this regard is usually only a matter of degree.
Another trap Krystal falls into is equating artistic quality with utility, as he shows when he says, "Writers who want to understand why the heart has reasons that reason cannot know are not going to write horror stories or police procedurals." The key word in that sentence is"understand." Krystal, like generations of high school English teachers, clearly feels that novels should have a purpose, a goal, and teach us something about ourselves or others. This view of literature as a didactic tool is old, dusty and blinkered. All kinds of art forms aren't "about" anything at all. Symphonies and instrumental jazz pieces are rarely "about" anything. The anger that greeted the advent of the Impressionists was largely to do with their subject matter not being deemed important or "about" anything. There is wide range of art that seeks to engage and play with the senses as its primary goal, and looked at in this way, genre fiction could be described as sensory literature. It can excite, arouse, anger and scare us, and the best genre fiction uses these emotions as a conduit for insight and ideas.
I'll happily admit that the vast bulk of genre fiction is formulaic and pedestrian, but there's certainly no proof that the same isn't true of literary fiction. And any list of the world's great literary novels would show a fair number of them are either genre or close enough to genre as to make no difference. One final example of the fine line between genre and literary fiction is found in that most literary of novels, Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. Probably the most memorable character in the novel's 3,000+ pages is the Baron de Charlus. He's an arch snob, a homophobic homosexual, and a raging antisemite. In short, he's an extraordinary, unlikely, larger-than-life character who could only exist between the pages of a book. And that makes him very much a character from genre fiction, which specializes in creating outsized characters who are too good, too bad, or too sexy to be true. The fact that Charlus is described with brilliant prose and an incisive intelligence doesn't alter the fact that with the addition of a hollowed-out volcano fortress and a death ray he'd make a superb Bond villain.
This past weekend my wife and I went across the border to do some shopping in Orchard Park, just south of Buffalo, New York. These days, what with the strong Canadian dollar, hopping across the border to pick up some groceries, clothes, and of course cheap American gas, is completely routine; most everyone in southern Ontario does it, and a big chunk of Buffalo's economy depends upon Canadian shoppers. But in 1967, when I was ten, a trip to the U.S. was just about the most exciting event on the calendar outside of Christmas. Fortunately for me, we had a cousin living in Livonia, a small town near Rochester about a three hour drive from Toronto. We'd visit her several times a year and I looked forward to these trips the way kids today dream about a trip to Disneyworld.
In 1967 I was reminded daily of how exotic and bold and fun the U.S. was thanks to Rocketship 7, a kids' cartoon show beamed out of Buffalo every afternoon. Between the cartoons came the commericals for a cornucopia of magical consumer goods such as PF Flyers sneakers. Their ads clearly and conclusively showed that small boys could, with the aid of PF Flyers, achieve running speeds comparable to that of a cheetah or The Flash. My Canadian feet were normally clad in desert boots; safe, sober footwear designed to create a steady, even gait and flat feet. Only Field Marshal Montgomery ever found them fashionable. And then there were the ads for breakfast cereals: Trix, Froot Loops, and the black truffle of sugary cereals, Capt. Crunch. These fructose and corn by-product concoctions weren't just delicious, they had mascots! The Silly Rabbit, Toucan Sam, and the Captain had 30-second adventures that were more involving than any random five hours of Canadian TV programming. The cereal I usually got at home was Puffed Wheat, which might as well have been called Cardboard-O's. But the ad that made me frantic with desire was for the Johnny Seven O.M.A. To say that the O.M.A. was a toy gun is like saying the Ferrari Testarossa is a passenger vehicle. O.M.A. stood for (and the ad's voiceover shouted this in a Voice of Doom) One Man Army. Seven weapons in one gun! With a gun like that I could pacify my entire neighbourhood. Don't believe me? Here's the ad:
I was an absolute fiend for toy weapons thanks to shows like Combat and The Rat Patrol, so if given the choice between the O.M.A. and the ability to fly like Superman I might have taken the plastic weapon. There was one problem: the most covet-worthy products of America's toy and sugar industries were almost never sold in Canada. Just to grind that fact home the border station TV commercials for these items always ended with the flashing words, NOT AVAILABLE IN CANADA. Sometimes they even added an announcer who would say the offending words sotto voce. And there were dozens of other products that carried this warning. Why was this? Probably something to do with tariffs, small market size, et cetera. All I knew is that there seemed to be some kind of fun and frivolity barrier between America and Canada.
Several times a year I'd have a chance to wallow in the bounty of the U.S. when we made the trip down to Livonia for a long weekend with cousin Cleo. We normally crossed the border at Niagara Falls, and there couldn't be a more stark difference between two countries than at that crossing. The Canuck side of Niagara Falls was all silly tourist attractions and parkland. The Yank side consisted of some touristy stuff and then a thick belt of factories that produced noise, flames and smells. We usually drove through this zone at night, and I can vividly recall passing huge factory windows that were left open in summer to provide some air and glancing inside them to see men silhouetted against open hearths and kilns. Of course, our car windows had to stay up even in the summer because the smells these factories produced would gag a Mumbai rat. It was an nose-scorching mix of burnt plastic, gas fumes, and something very rotten. Best not to think about how toxic those fumes were.
Once we were well past Niagara Falls, N.Y., my parents would, on occasion, stop at a tavern. These taverns were always outside of towns (something to do with zoning laws, I think) and had a convivial, almost family-friendly atmosphere. My folks would enjoy their first Genessee Ale since the last trip to Livonia, and I would play on the inevitable shuffleboard table. The idea of the whole family going into a tavern would have been unthinkable at home. Taverns in Toronto were gloomy bunkers with separate entrances for men and "Ladies and Escorts."
The sign tells you all you need to know about the cheeriness of Canadian taverns. And if you wanted a bottle of booze you had to go to an outlet of the government-owned and ominously-named Liquor Control Board of Ontario. Once inside you would scan noticeboards bearing the names and prices of the different kinds of grog. Nothing was on display. You would then write down your choice on a form, take it to a cashier and pay, and then hand the stamped form to a man dressed like a banquet hall waiter who would disappear into the back of the building and return with your purchase, which was then placed in a brown paper bag. The U.S.S.R. had nothing on Canada when it came to scorning consumerism. No wonder my dad delighted in U.S. liquor stores, with their open displays of booze that often came in novelty bottles shaped like soldiers or racehorses or these:
Livonia was a very small town, partly agricultural and partly a bedroom community for people working in Kodak's head office and plant in nearby Rochester. For my purposes it was excellent as the town had an ample supply of boys my own age who were eager to play all the usual childhood games. One unusual activity we enjoyed was "playing store", as we called it, at the Livonia Dairy. The Livonia Dairy was a small concern, consisting of a barn, dairy equipment, a walk-in refrigerator holding milk, butter, and so on, and a till. On Sundays the business was closed, but they left the doors open for people to pick up their dairy needs and pay on the honour system. We kids would "man" the till on Sundays and go into the refrigerator to get people's purchases. We took our wages in the form of chocolate milk. We had no adult supervision and no one seemed to mind what we were doing. I know it sounds like something from a Norman Rockwell daydream, but it's true.
But the highlight of a trip to Livonia was going to Arlans department store near Rochester. This was our Aladdin's Cave. The three of us (four when my older sister came along) would split up and not meet again until shopping exhaustion set in. My mother would hunt for clothes and textiles, all of which were far cheaper and more various in the U.S. I, of course, was in the toy section, marveling at the serried ranks of toy weaponry: muskets, rifles, machine guns, cap pistols, even toy bazookas. Dad was something of a magpie; he ferreted out the rare and the unusual on Arlan's shelves, but he was especially attracted to anything that came in a jumbo-sized container. On one memorable occasion he dragged me out of the toy section to show me a quart bottle of Hai Karate aftershave, which he promptly dropped on the floor. We scurried away and that part of the store became a musky no-go zone for the rest of the day. Arlan's also introduced us to cutting edge developments in American junk food. We had our first submarine sandwiches at Arlan's and became hopelessly addicted to them. Back home, sandwiches were only available through the Sandwich Control Board of Ontario, and by law could contain only one piece of meat and one piece of cheese. Well, maybe not, but you get the picture. Mum wasn't usually too interested in foodstuffs until the day she discovered cheese puffs. She bought a bolster-sized bag, and by the time we drove back to Canada the bag was nearly empty and mum was bright orange from her fingertips to her elbows.
Passing through Customs back into Canada was always a fraught occasion for dad. He hated paying duty, so as we approached the border he and mum would rehearse their lies for the Customs officer. Dad was a poor liar, inevitably laughing nervously the second we rolled up to the Customs booth. If that wasn't a giveaway the sight of our overstuffed station wagon always gave the game away. We'd be waved over for an inspection and a jaundiced official eye would be passed over the contents of the wagon.
"Is there alcohol in those, sir?"
"No, that's a collection of porcelain Revolutionary War figurines."
"They have screwtops."
"Hahahaha! So they do."
Duty paid, we'd be on our way home where I would be the envy of my peers for at least several days as I unveiled the latest additions to my armoury. Securing the Johnny Seven O.M.A. made me a local hero for at least two weeks. Within those weeks I lost all of the gun's moving and removable parts, and was soon reduced to making machine gun noises when I played with it, the same as with all my other toy guns. It didn't matter. There would soon be something new and wonderful in America to lust after.
Livonia is still there, but with the imminent bankruptcy of Kodak it's probably going to go back to being entirely agricultural. The Livonia Dairy might still be going, but I'm sure they're no longer on the honour system. The factories in Niagara Falls, N.Y., are silent and sweet-smelling; every one of them mothballed or bulldozed. When my wife and I do some cross-border shopping now it's often for the same products (but cheaper) that we have at home, and this last time some familiar names (Old Navy, IHOP, Borders) had closed their doors, done in by western New York's declining economy. Video game warfare has replaced the need for the O.M.A., but, just for old time's sake, I always lie at Customs.
Philip D'Antoni isn't a name you hear mentioned often when the history of modern cinema is discussed, but he certainly deserves some credit for two notable contributions to film history. The first is the car chase. D'Antoni was the producer of Bullitt, The French Connection, and The Seven-Ups. Now there were certainly car chases before Bullitt, but they were usually done for comic effect as in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, or they were clumsily filmed scenes (lots of rear projection shots) of squad cars chasing bank robbers. In Bullitt and The French Connection the car chase became an action centrepiece, the equivalent of the cavalry charge in westerns and historical epics. D'Antoni's "modern" car chases looked and sounded real, and created a new kind of cinematic excitement. After The French Connection virtually no action film was complete unlesss it included one or more elaborately staged car chases.
D'Antoni's other addition to film history is the creation of a sub-genre I'd call cop noir. Cop noir begins with The French Connection. If film noir was all about doomed lovers, laconic private detectives, and moody cinematography, cop noir was about documenting the decline and fall of American cities and the institutions that make them function as seen through cop eyes. Cop noir looks raw, sounds raw, and shows big American cities torn apart by street crime, organized crime, drug addiction, poverty, and corruption. Hard on the heels of The French Connection came Dirty Harry, Across 110th Street, Busting, Serpico, The Taking of Pelham 123, Badge 373, and a score of similar films. Bullitt isn't cop noir if only because Steve McQueen looks great, acts cool, mostly keeps his temper, and has a supermodel girlfriend before there were supermodels. Compare and contrast with Gene Hackman in The French Connection and you'll see what I mean.
And that brings us to The Seven-Ups. The story has a pre-Jaws Roy Scheider leading a small team of N.Y.C. cops who go after villains wanted for crimes that earn sentences of seven years and up. Why seven years? Because it makes for a punny movie title. The film's title is a dud, but the film isn't. The Seven-Ups is essentially a sequel to Connection in everything but name. It has the same gritty look, Don Ellis scored both films, and it features possibly the best car chase of the three films D'Antoni produced.
The plot has Scheider's team investigating why some of the city's crime bosses are being kidnapped. It turns out Scheider's main snitch, played by Tony Lo Bianco, is using information he gets from an unwitting Scheider to target wealthy criminals for kidnapping and ransom. Things are further complicated by the fact that snitch and cop are childhood friends.Things don't end well for one of them. The story is original and engaging, and might have been even better if D'Antoni hadn't decided to direct this film himself. He had no experience at directing and it shows on occasion. A couple of sequences, notably a scene in a car wash, are clumsily handled and feature a variety of glaring continuity errors.
D'Antoni does redeem himself with the action sequences, which are quick, dirty and efficient, and the car chase, which is certainly as good as the one in Connection as well as being longer. D'Antoni the director also does a nice job with the actors, choosing an all-ugly cast of New York actors who bring a lot of verisimilitude to the film. And New York looks like, well, the New York you don't see in Woody Allen movies. This is Ratso Rizzo's N.Y.C.
If you like to remember New York as being mad, bad and dangerous to visit, check out The Seven-Ups. Spoiler alert: the trailer below shows way too much of the film's highlights.
There are literary novels, and then there are Literary Novels. The Chateau is very definitely the latter. It follows, very consciously, the literary path trod by Henry James with his portraits of middle-class Americans encountering the charms and pitfalls of Europe. In this case, we follow Harold and Barbara Rhodes of New York as they visit France in 1948. In James' novels The American and The Portrait of aLady, the American characters travel to Europe and experience the expected culture clashes, but also become involved in dramatic plots revolving around love and marriage.
Maxwell does not make the Rhodes' jump through any dramatic hoops, choosing instead to show them coping with the difficulties of new social relationships. The Rhodes' arrive in a France that is still just recovering from the war. They begin their four month trip with an extended stay at a small chateau in the Loire Valley. The chateau, owned by Mlle. Vienot, is run as a guesthouse, and Harold and Barbara soon find themselves in a series of new friendships and awkward social entanglements with Vienot's guests and relatives. The action later moves to the south of France, and then Paris, but the Rhodes' remain involved with the people they first met at the chateau.
Maxwell takes an acute look at the social anxieties of the Rhodes, as well as their emotional and psychological reactions to France, Paris, and the pleasures and pains of travel itself. On this level the novel works quite well as a unique insight into the way travel (as opposed to tourism) can be both psychologically upsetting and liberating. The Rhodes' have a short, but blissful, sojourn on the Riviera and Maxwell captures the intensity of the experience through this remark of Harold's at the end of the stay: "I feel the way I ought to have felt at seventeen and didn't."
Where Maxwell is less successful is with his main characters. For the purposes of this kind of novel Harold and Barbara have to be somewhat innocent and naive, which is fine, but they're also rather flat and colourless. This is a bit surprising given that the French characters, even some of the minor ones, come across as complex and fully-rounded. The Rhodes', by comparison, have characteristics but no character. They have, for example, quite an interest in opera and theatre, and yet nothing about them seems artistic, and nothing we learn about their backgrounds make it seem like they'd be culture vultures. At times it feels as though Maxwell made them opera and theatre buffs just to give the Rhodes somewhere to go in the evenings.
Where Maxwell differs most from James is on the prose front. James was famous for a baroque, nuanced style that people either found brilliant or maddening. Maxwell has a leaner, more direct style, and leavens his story with a lot more humour than James ever did. And in the last section of the novel Maxwell even takes a stab at deconstructing his own novel, with a reader (we assume) interrogating the author as to what happened to the various characters after the "end" of the story.
On the whole The Chateau works best as a look at the tensions and rewards of travel. Maxwell's prose is a pleasure, but it also has to be said that there are some self-consciously literary asides and flourishes that are quite distracting. Maxwell was the fiction editor at The New Yorker from the 1940s to the '70s, and at times I got the feeling that this novel was as much about impressing his peers as it was about Harold and Barbara Rhodes.
