Crimes Against Nature: The Anthology

I don't know if you noticed that the world changed on Monday, October 7, but I did. Down and Out Books published Crimes Against Nature: New Stories of Environmental Villainy. It is the first anthology I have edited.  

As I hope the title makes clear, each story relates crime to some ecological issue: climate change, wildfire, environmental justice, invasive species, recycling, overtourism, etc.  The types of stories cover the (polluted) waterfront: noir, police, caper, comic, psychological, even one inspired by comic books!

This book  has been a long time coming.  I remember telling my buddy S.J. Rozan about the idea at the Bouchercon in Raleigh and that was, heaven help us, 2015.  

Why did it take ten years? Because I'm not the most efficient go-getter in the writing trade and because it took a while to find the right publisher.  

Once Down and Out said yes my first move was to go back to S.J. and remind her of her enthusiasm for the project a decade ago.

She replied approximately that she had no time and couldn't possibly do it,so of course she would.  As I have said before, S.J. is a mensch.  She even provided what I had hoped for but did not dare to request: a story about Chin Yong-Yun, the wonderful mother of Lydia Chin, who stars in many of Rozan's novels.  Like all the shorts about Mrs. Chin, this one is a treat.

As for the other authors, some will be very familiar to the SleuthSayers readers: Michael Bracken, Barb Goffman, R.T. Lawton, Janice Law, and (ahem) Robert Lopresti.

Then there is a category of some of the best names in the short mystery field: Josh Pachter, Gary Phillips, and  Kristine Kathryn Rusch,

Some authors I consider newcomers, although that may only be because I suspect I was first published before they were born: Sosan Breen, Sarah M.Chen, Karen Harrington, and David Heska Hanbli Weiden.

Finally we have Jon McGoran and Mark Stevens, whom I chose because their excellent writing has centered on the environment.

It's a stellar cast and I can't wait for you to discover what dirt they have dug up.

Every story paints a picture, don’t it

Mary and I went to this year’s Bouchercon in Nashville.  Aside from the venue, which was undoubtedly the weirdest place I’ve ever been (Harlan Coben said it felt like being trapped in the world’s biggest terrarium), it was a pretty good program.  A writer friend asked me what I took away from the experience, so when thinking about it, in that moment, I realized it was all about the story.

There’s so much advice, good and bad, so much bullshit and blather about writing mysteries, that one tends to forget the core mission:  To tell a good story. 

I grew up walking our big collie at night with my older brother.  He kept it interesting by

telling stories, novel-length narratives he conjured in real time and strung together like a radio series.   During the day, he fed me books, mostly from the stacks collected by our father and grandfather, early 20^th century adventure books and tales of Victorian derring-do.  Most of my family were also big readers, and story tellers, even fabulists, often concocting imaginary tales rendered as indisputable fact.  So I was awash in a storytelling environment.

This is the point of the whole enterprise. 

The plot is naturally at the center of this, though plot is nothing without believable characters, voice, setting, brisk dialogue, etc., all the scaffolding that holds the thing together.  The vegetables in the beef stew.  Pick your metaphor.  It’s not one thing, it’s everything.  

One thing you don’t need is a Ph.D. in English literature, though Robert B. Parker had one.  As does David Morrell, who gave us Rambo.  Though Mick Herron, who invented Slow Horses, told us at Bouchercon that he knew exactly nothing about the British Secret Service, which he feels served him well.  All he had to do was tell a good story. 

To wit:  Right after graduating from college, a friend and I thought it would be an excellent idea to drive from Pennsylvania to the West Coast in my ’65 MGB.  We travelled light, with only the essentials:  two sleeping bags, a guitar, beer cooler and about $80 in hard cash.  Somewhere in Arizona we were driving through 100 degree air down RT. 66 at about eighty miles an hour, since any slower would reduce airflow to the MG’s engine, causing it to overheat.  We kept seeing signs for “Arroyo Ahead.”  I figured that meant a taco stand, or Native American trading post, so pressed on at the same velocity. 

Arroyo actually means a big ditch in the middle of the road to allow for very occasional flash floods to pass through unabated.  So when we got there, the MG basically became airborne, hit the bottom of the ditch, then shot up in the air on the other side.  My friend, asleep at the time, spent most of the zero-gravity pinned under the top of the car, when he wasn’t bouncing off the seat.  The entire exhaust system, never more than a few inches above the road, was scraped clean and scattered into the desert. 

Civilization was only about a hundred miles in either direction, but down the road we could see a maintenance crew at work on the white-hot pavement. 

So after piling up all the exhaust components we could find, we hiked down there, hoping they had some thoughts on next steps.  Though before we got there, I found a spool of mechanic’s wire lying off to the side of the road.  Exactly what we needed.  So using the aluminum beer cans and C-clamps I always kept on hand (if you’ve ever owned an MG, you know why), and the mechanic’s wire to suspend the whole jerry-rigged apparatus under the car, I had a serviceable exhaust system.  Actually sounded pretty cool, since the resonator and several feet of tailpipe were lost to the scheme, resulting in a pleasing, guttural purr. 

We made it to the Pacific Ocean, up to Oregon, across the big sky states, then down to New Orleans by way of North Dakota, then back up to home.  About another 10,000 miles. The exhaust worked fine.   

And that’s the story. 

 

 

Musing on Mitty

 At the just-completed Nashville Bouchercon, I was on the panel "Is It Over Now?: Bringing Characters to Life in Short Stories."  I always find these panels fun, a chance to meet some fellow writers and have engaging exchanges with the audience.  Our moderator, Meagan Lucas of Reckon Review, had some lively and insightful questions for us, including this: who is your favorite character from a short story?  For this particular question, I didn't have to think very hard.  My all-time favorite character from a short story is the protagonist of my all-time favorite short story: Walter Mitty, from James Thurber's masterful 1939 "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty."

If you haven't read "Mitty," you're missing something special, and you should go do so now.  It can be found in any number of anthologies and collections, and a little light Googling just might turn up a PDF version on the web, if you're not picky.

Am I going to spoil the story as I discuss it here?  In a way, although "Mitty" is a hard story to spoil, because, in some ways, it's barely a story at all.  It's very short, coming in at just over 2000 words, and strictly speaking almost nothing happens.  There's certainly not much that you could describe as a plot: Walter and his wife dive into the town of Waterbury to run a few errands.  That's it.

James Thurber

So what makes the story so memorable, and why is it worth talking about on a blog about crime fiction 85 years after it was published?

It's all about Walter.

Walter Mitty is fiction's ultimate daydreamer.  As he goes about the crushingly dull chores of a perfectly mundane day, he repeatedly slips into highly detailed reveries in which he is the world's foremost surgeon, or a crack pistol shot on trial for murder, or an RAF pilot stoically preparing for an impossible mission, and so on.  He's always jerked back to reality, but invariably returns to his inner world of fantasy, to the imaginary existences where his true life is lived.

As far as everyone else in the world is concerned, Walter is a shlub.  His wife nags and infantilizes him.  Cops yell at him to move it along.  Parking attendants and mechanics sneer at him, and store clerks condescend to him.  In his fantasies, however, he is powerful, accomplished, confident, feared, adored.  And here, perhaps, is the first reason for any reader or writer to love this story: it's a tribute to exactly the kind of enrichment and empowerment we have all felt in reading and writing; in slipping away into a story, of our own making or someone else's; in the world of fiction itself.  To be sure, Walter's specific fantasies owe more to the movies than to written fiction, but in a very real way Walter Mitty is a writer.  He may not be a great writer, or even a particularly good one; his fantasy life does lean heavily on familiar narrative tropes and genre archetypes.  Still, there are some inspired stylistic touches (I love the "pocketa-pocketa-pocketa" noise he imagines every machine as making), and you certainly can't fault him for lacking narrative energy.

What really makes the story work is that Thurber doesn't look down on Walter or condescend to him.  He shows us all the other people who feel disdain for Walter, but, right up through the story's perfect closing line (which I will not spoil here), he himself understands, sympathizes with, and even admires how Walter has made an interior life for himself that is so much richer and more fulfilling than his reality.

It hardly needs to be said that the story itself is masterfully written.  Thurber was a great prose stylist in the style of The New Yorker, where "Mitty" first appeared: sophisticated, witty, expressing tremendous emotion through restrained, carefully selected detail.  He creates one of literature's most enduring characters and his entire world in what amounts to about five pages, something anyone interested in short fiction can respect.  I particularly love the way small details are woven through through the story, linking Walter's inner and outer lives in clever ways.  

For example: remembering how he's been humiliated when his wife makes him take their car to a mechanic, Walter decides that next time he'll wear a sling on his right arm to show why he couldn't do the work himself.  In the meantime, he can't remember what it was his wife asked him to go buy, and while he's thinking about it, a passing newsboy shouts something about a trial.  In a flash, Walter is on the stand being interrogated by a district attorney about his ability to fire a fatal shot at a great distance with a pistol.  Walter's lawyer protests that his client had his right arm in a sling on the night of the murder, but Walter immediately and calmly asserts that he could have easily made the shot with his left hand.  A woman screams, the DA strikes out at her, and Walter punches him on the chin, calling him a "miserable cur"--and the physical Walter, standing on a sidewalk, says "puppy biscuit" out loud, having suddenly remembered what he's supposed to be shopping for.

A lot of what a writer needs to know about transitions and focus can be found in that passage.

Hollywood has taken two passes at adapting "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," and while both films have elements of interest, neither completely lives up to the source (surprising, I know).  The first version, released in 1947, starred Danny Kaye as Walter and was directed by Norman Z. McLeod, who made some truly great comedies with people like the Marx Brothers and W. C. Fields. Thurber was consulted at various points by the filmmakers, and there are small moments lifted more or less directly from his story, but he ultimately didn't care for the result.  The film's narrative and style were so directly shaped around its star's persona that Thurber is said to have referred to it as "The Public Life of Danny Kaye."

Kaye's Mitty is a proofreader at a publisher specializing in pulp and adventure magazines (in the original story, we're given no hint of Walter's occupation, and he may well be retired).  He's had this job for eleven years, but still lives at home with his overbearing mother, who tucks him in at night and brings him warm milk.  His abusive boss steals his best ideas while mocking him for his daydreams, and his fiancé is an empty-headed young woman who cares a good deal more for her dog than for Walter.  

The film is not, of course, content to let Walter remain just a daydreamer.  A chance encounter with a mysterious woman on a train draws him into a real-life adventure revolving around the location of Dutch treasures, hidden prior to the Nazi invasion and now sought by government agents and a gang of crooks.  The plot makes virtually no sense, but there is some fun to be had, particularly in Boris Karloff's turn as a malevolent psychologist who tries to get information from Walter by convincing him that it's all just been another daydream.  In the end, Walter asserts himself, foiling the bad guys, marrying the girl (the one from the train, natch) and demanding a promotion.  He thus earns what Thurber's Mitty never earns, and does not need: the validation of the external world.

Danny Kaye was known for comic songs built around nonsense patter, and the movie obliges him by shoehorning two of them in for no very good reason.  The first is particularly jarring.  It comes at a moment when Walter is having his fantasy of being an ace RAF fighter pilot, much of which--including some of the specific dialogue--is lifted directly from Thurber's text.  Suddenly, however, one of the other pilots remembers that when he and Mitty were in college together, Mitty did a hilarious imitation of their music professor.  Everyone present immediately demands that he do the imitation, causing Walter to shuck his RAF uniform, don a waiter's coat as an academic gown, and launch into a German-accented musical "lecture" about the history of a symphony.  When I watched the film, I felt as though the song lasted just a bit longer than WWII itself (the YouTube link above is only a portion of the number).  Danny Kaye was a talented man who did a lot of great things in his career, but this scene is the reason fast-forwarding was invented.

The other song, "Anatole of Paris," is somewhat more bearable, if only because it is shorter and easier to understand.  It comes when Walter, for reasons I won't even try to explain, is trapped at a fashion show and daydreams about being a famous designer of women's hats--not, I think, something that would have much appealed to Thurber's character.

The next big-screen version of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty arrived in 2013 and starred Ben Stiller, who also directed, in the title role.  This version is even further removed from Thurber's story, but is, in my view, a considerably better film than Kaye's vehicle.  Stiller's Mitty works in the photo department of Life magazine, which is about to publish its final print edition before becoming Life Online (it's interesting that both movies have Walter working in publishing).  He has a crush on his coworker Cheryl (Kristen Wiig), but can barely bring himself to speak to her, let alone send her a wink on eHarmony.  He's good at his job, but his family and coworkers are accustomed to the moments when he "zones out," entering one of his daydreams and becoming completely oblivious to what they're saying.

The daydreams in the 2013 Mitty are largely confined to the first half of the film, and none have any connection to the specific fantasies in Thurber's original.  They're mostly brief action sequences, like an elaborate, physics-defying martial arts battle with his smug jerk of a boss.  Inevitably, this Walter is also drawn into a real-life adventure.  A legendary photojournalist (Sean Penn) has sent in a picture to be used as the final Life cover, but it's been lost.  Walter sets out to track the photographer down, pursuing him first through Greenland and Iceland, then across "ungoverned Afghanistan" into the Himalayas.  Along the way he jumps from a helicopter into the shark-infested North Sea, flees an erupting volcano, plays soccer with warlords, and so on.  Once again, by the end of the film, he has gained the courage to act, making a date with Cheryl and telling off his boss.

Like the earlier film, this adaptation of "Mitty" inverts Thurber's story by presenting Walter's daydreams as a childish habit that must be left behind, rather than a defiant act of resistance again drudgery.  Still, the Stiller version is much more worthy of your time.  The central plot is engaging and reaches a satisfying resolution, the cast is stacked with talented performers (Patton Oswalt, Shirley MacLaine, Adam Scott), and much of the movie, particularly the sequences in Iceland, is stunningly beautiful.  It's also interesting as a kind of time capsule of the cultural moment when the old, analog world vanished into a new, digital one.  The film is explicitly an elegy for the print version of Life, and thus an elegy for the world of newsstand magazines--like the one that gave birth to "Mitty" to begin with.

We really did lose a great deal when we let that world slip away.  Computers can do a lot, but they hardly ever go pocketa-pocketa-pocketa.

   

Bouchercon Briefing

Last week I returned home from Bouchercon, the world mystery convention, having walked a million miles while there—not hyperbole, I assure you. That hotel was designed for long-distance athletes. Anyway, I attended a bunch of panels—that involved sitting, after all—and while I didn't take a lot of notes, I did write some things down. Usually it was something I knew but the author or editor had made their point in an interesting way. At other times, it was information I didn't know (Kathleen Donnelly, this means you). Here are those notes. Everything that follows is a paraphrase. Any mistakes are my own.

Mysti Berry - A short story is about a character with a problem and the consequences of the choices made to solve that problem.

It's a Mystery! (Oops, I failed to note who said this) - Cozy mysteries are books with hope, community, and trust--things that make readers feel good.

Clair Lamb - For books or stories with texting, an older character is more likely to use full sentences and punctuation. A younger character is more likely to use abbreviations and emojis. In regard to abbreviations and emojis, the author should try to ensure the reader can at least mostly follow the conversation. If there are small non-vital bits of a text conversation that a reader might not understand but could quickly move past, having gotten the basic gist of the text, that is okay.

Kathleen Donnelly - Dogs can retain scent memories for years. (She writes mysteries involving a K-9 tracker.)

Otto Penzler - To make characters sound different, vary their cadence and word choice.  

I am sure I must have said brilliant things on my panel, but it was at 8 a.m., so my memory of that hour is a bit foggy. If you were at that panel and I said anything useful, please share it in the comments. Or if you heard words of wisdom at any of the other panels, I would love to hear them. After all, you might have attended a great panel I missed. At conventions, hard choices often must be made.There were times when I would have liked to attend two panels at the same time, but I haven't perfected that skill...yet.

Before I go, I want to give my thanks once again to the Short Mystery Fiction Society, which honored me at the convention with this year's Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer Award, which is the society's lifetime achievement award. SMFS President and fellow SleuthSayer Joe Walker said really nice things about me as I walked onto the stage, but for the life of me, I can't remember what they were. Sigh. If only, like in the panels, I had been taking notes.

Next year in New Orleans!