Some Thoughts on the Importance of Plot, Character and Conflict in Fiction

by Brian Thornton


In previous posts I've discussed the importance of nailing down setting and on journaling. I've talked about the importance of doing one's research (especially when writing specialized stuff like historicals).

But what about plot and character?

Fiction these days tends to get microsliced and quantified into ever thinner subgenres, and yet there are really only two categories of "fiction" that matter. Fiction that is plot-driven, and fiction that is character-driven.

I submit to you that the best fiction (and I most emphatically include crime fiction in that designation!) contains both a strong plot and well-crafted, believable characters. As examples of this I give you everything from The Odyssey to The Maltese Falcon, from Hamlet to Pride and Prejudice. All of these works possess terrific plotting and unforgettable characters.

The two together make for compelling reading.

It's possible to go too far one way or the other. Take the recent trend among writers of literary fiction to go too far with character, to eschew plot to the point where no less a worthy than Pulitzer winner Michael Chabon dismisses this entire subgenre as ''plotless and sparkling with epiphanic dew.''

And boring.

Boring.

Boring.

Boring!

Take the pendulum in the other direction. We've all read one of those thrillers where the author gives the reader a brief thumbnail sketch of an already familiar protagonist, surrounds this familiar literary trope with other familiar-to-the-point-of-cliche literary tropes (the race against time, doomsday scenario, villains so evil they cause flowers to wilt as they walk past, etc.) then wind up the plot, and take the reader through a breathless three-hundred-plus pages that gets labeled by reliably glowing reviews as "An action-packed thrill ride!" And yeah, sure, the plot moves like gang-busters, but if Biff Hardslab, intrepid ex-(Insert-Name-Of-Goverment-Agency Here)-agent acts as if he's carved from granite, with nothing about him to flesh him out, humanize him, know what else this "plot" is?

That's right.

BORING!

At the risk of stating the obvious, plot and character live in dynamic tension with one another in the best fiction. Without the strong presence of both you've got long prose poems on the one hand and cliched, unengaging drivel on the other.

So how to balance that out? How to keep these two aspects of fiction interacting so that we as writers keep that dynamic tension at work?

One word.

Conflict.

It's one thing these two sides of the fiction coin share.

With plot it's mostly external. Thriller master John Le Carre  once famously said by way of defining plot: "'The cat sat on the mat' is not the beginning of a plot. 'The cat sat on the dog's mat' is."

With Character it's mostly internal:

Private detective Sam Spade disliked his partner, and had so little respect for him that he had begun

NOT boring.

an affair with his wife. When the partner gets killed, what is Spade going to do about it?

King Odysseus of Ithaca gets blown off course on his voyage home. The gods are against him. What is he going to do about it?

Prince Hamlet of Denmark's father died suddenly and his uncle married his mother on the way to edging Hamlet out of his inheritance and the throne. What is he going to do about it?

Elizabeth Bennett has seriously misjudged several men in her life, and things go from bad to worse for her family as a result. What is she going to do about it?

All of these protagonists have options, and a whole solid chunk of each of their stories is filled with their own internal conflicts about "What to do about it"?

And that's where Character comes in. Spade plays everything close to the vest, so much so that no one (including the reader) really knows what he's going to do about this until the last few pages of The Maltese Falcon. No square-jawed saint on a white horse, Spade is two-faced, has little respect for women and apparently none for the sanctity of marriage. But by the end he has laid out in one of fiction's most unforgettable monologues, not only what he's doing, but why.

Why do we like flawed characters like this?

Because we're human beings, and human beings have a love-hate relationship with perfection. We strive for it, are suspicious of the very notion when it's presented to us, and ultimately realize that because of our very nature it is ultimately unobtainable for us.

Many things, but NOT boring!

Take Odysseus. Why does it take him ten years to get home? Because he won't stop taunting the gods. After he cleverly blinds the cyclops Polyphemos and helps his crew escape from the the monster's lair, does he quietly sail away? No. He taunts Polyphemos, reveals his true name, and practically dares the cyclops to do something to even the score. Of course, when you're taunting a guy whose father is the god who rules the water you're using as your highway home, you're probably asking for it.

And Hamlet? He's smart, energetic, insightful, brave and loyal.

Gorgeously written and NOT boring!

He's also torn over the question of his father's death and his uncle's culpability in said death. Add in the fact that he loves his mother and is afraid that she might have had a knowing hand in dear old dad's assassination, and you've got a recipe for indecision to the point of paralysis (and some matchless poetry, to boot!). Once Hamlet finally makes up his mind to act, he does so. With a vengeance.

My wife loves Colin Firth- also NOT boring!

And then there's Elizabeth Bennett. Smart, accomplished, insightful, she is also quick-tempered and given to snap judgements about people. On top of that, she's prideful. Her happy ending only comes after external conflict (plot) has worked on her (character) enough for her to learn enough about herself to face her own shortcomings in lieu of making lists of those of others.

Let's take it to the comments section. What are the names of other authors successfully meld great plotting with unforgettable characters?

Through a Glass, Darkly

by David Edgerley Gates

The exposure of PRISM, the clandestine NSA data-mining operation, has raised a lot of hackles, both inside and outside the national security structure, and on both sides of the privacy debate. I'd like to assess three of the issues I think are involved. This is of course by no means exhaustive. I'm just putting my oar in the water.

First of all, what is it? The system, or systems, is based on pattern-recognition technology. A crude analogy might be a chessboard. Bobby Fischer was a genius at chess because he could read the entire game, not just six or eight or a dozen moves ahead, but every possible outcome of every available move. Consider the sixty-four squares and the fact that each piece, rook, knight, bishop, pawn, or queen, has a specific capacity, for attack or defense, all of them in relation to the others. 'Position' is the sum of these parts. Imagine, then, if you stacked eight chessboards on top of one another, a cube, sixty-four squares to the eighth power, making it a three-dimensional game. Not even a Bobby Fischer could calculate all the possible coordinates and relationships. Multiply this model by a few billion, and you'd have some idea of PRISM's brute strength.

Metadata, so-called, isn't about content. PRISM doesn't filter for keywords, or labels, or names. It looks for contours, and reconstructs their shape. A recent piece by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker explains this in some detail,

 Nor is this is a new development. DARPA, the Pentagon research facility also known as the Skunk Works, began work ten years ago or more on a set of programs they called Total Information Awareness. The first practical application was CARNIVORE, which analyzed electronic communications, encrypted and cleartext, but CARNIVORE was never fully deployed because of---wait for it---privacy concerns. PRISM has a narrower search parameter. Think of it this way. It's an axiom in the spy trade that a given message, by itself, is meaningless without context. What's important is who sent it, and who it was addressed to. In other words, the link is incriminating, and what might actually have been said in the message is secondary. PRISM ignores the message, and concentrates on the messenger. How is this effective? Your circle of contacts, immediate or one step removed, defines your profile, but 'profile,' in this sense, having nothing to do with your Facebook page. Everybody leaves a footprint, a migratory pattern, a set of lazy habits. I can stalk you through your friends.

The second point I'd like to take up is the role of private contractors in the defense and intelligence communities. GI's, for example, don't pull KP anymore. Food service is jobbed out. More at issue, hired guns like Blackwater have taken over physical security for diplomatic personnel in high-risk areas, and their lack of accountability got them thrown out of Iraq. Two of the guys killed in Benghazi, on the security detail, weren't CIA, but outside hires. This isn't just anecdotal. DoD employs 700,000 contractors, 22% of its workforce. 70% of the intelligence budget, by some estimates, goes to outsourcing, but this is difficult to pin down, because the specifics of the intelligence budget are of course classified. In the case of NSA, nobody knows exactly---nobody knows anything about NSA, exactly, since its culture of secrecy gives it the nickname No Such Agency---but an educated guess is that they have half a million private contract employees on their payroll, with high-end security clearances. These aren't insignificant numbers, and it's worth noting that they don't represent any kind of savings, either. Edward Snowden was knocking down 200K, twice what a GS-15 would make, or any military enlisted or officer rank. Booz Allen, Snowden's employer, had 5.9 billion dollars in revenue last year, almost all of it from U.S. government contracts.

The question being raised now, though, is whether private security contractors are stakeholders in national security. This isn't to tar them all with Snowden's brush, or to suggest dereliction of duty, but career military or civil service people tend to serve a purpose larger than themselves. Working for Booz Allen is a job, like any other. If you get a better offer, you move on. Oversized cubicle farms don't inspire brand loyalty. You're not in the Marines. It may be unfair to make these assertions, and the last thing we need is a witch-hunt, which would do nothing to undo the damage already done, and the lack of confidence the leaks have created, but it's long past time to re-examine the hermetic culture of the intelligence community. A good starting point might be the influence of corporate, marketplace economics.

Which brings us to the third and last question.  Who are these guys? Whistleblowers. Leakers. The terminology is suspect. It implies high moral standards, or at least moral relativism. Bradley Manning was obviously a square peg in a round hole. He may have been bullied, because he was gay, or just an odd duck. Almost certainly, he was isolated and unhappy, and his supervisors in the chain of command should have picked up on it. He was an accident waiting to happen. The court-martial proceedings against him have the flavor of retribution, not so much for his actions, but for the inaction of his immediate superiors. They should have suspended his clearance and sent him to a psychiatrist. Instead, they left him to sink or swim. The fact that Manning was treated with such indifference might go some way toward explaining him. He was at the bottom of the food chain. Perhaps, as a reflex, or in an effort to regain his self-respect, he came to feel he was better than they were, a sort of prince in exile, a secret agent, and in the end, he cast off his disguise. Sadly, no prince was revealed.

Snowden is a different case. He had a successful career, and the material trappings to show for it. He was, by his own account, quite the ladies' man. He was outgoing and personable. He had a social life. The other side of the coin from Manning. Snowden was dealt better cards. He turned for unaccountable reasons. He claims the high moral ground, but there's an odor of sanctity I mistrust. I'd give him more credit if he'd stuck around to face the music, but the prospect of doing thirty to life in a federal supermax would give anybody pause. What bothers me is the itinerary he's chosen. He's now left Hong Kong for Moscow, with the stated intention of flying to Cuba, en route to seeking asylum in Ecuador. The net effect of his stay in China has been to give support to Beijing's control and censorship of the Internet, e.g., they can claim that U.S. accusations of Chinese hacking are the pot calling the kettle black. Not to put too fine a point on it, Snowden is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. These are not the actions of an honorable man impelled by outrage. These are the acts of a defector.

My Hit List

On May 25, John Floyd posted a list of his thirty favorite crime/mystery/suspense films, in no particular order.  John's theory was such a list reveals as much about the compiler as the subject being addressed, which I think is true.  My somewhat impromptu list, given below, reflects my love of forgotten and obscure titles and actors.  For the most part, I've left out comic mysteries, and I've also intentionally excluded most series films, which leaves out a lot of great ones.  I may address mystery film series in a future post.  So here are my thirty.  I hope you'll give one or two of them a try.

1920s

Bulldog Drummond (1929)

Ronald Colman's first talkie shows that not all early sound films were deer in the headlights of the new technology.  (Yes, he made a second Drummond, but are two a series?)

1930s

Murder! (1930)

Herbert Marshall in an early (and creaky) Alfred Hitchcock talkie.  Marshall lost a leg in World War I, but still had a long film career, as this list will show.

The Maltese Falcon (1931)

A pre-code version of the Hammett classic.  The Bogart version implies that Spade was a hound.  Ricardo Cortez demonstrates it, with the aid of Bebe Daniels and Thelma Todd.

Murder on a Honeymoon (1935)

The one true series mystery I let slip in, from the Hildegarde Withers series starring Edna May Oliver and one of the great comedy-relief policemen, James Gleason.

The Ex-Mrs. Bradford (1936)

One of the best Thin Man imitations, because it has William Powell himself, plus Jean Arthur.

It's a Wonderful World (1939)

Really a screwball comedy, but it has a murder and James Stewart as a private detective.  Plus Claudette Colbert and the dumbest cop in the movies, Nat Pendleton.

1940s

Grand Central Murder (1942)

A nice little B picture by MGM, a studio whose B's look like A's.   Van Heflin leads a solid cast that includes another great comedy cop, Sam Levene.

Keeper of the Flame (1943)

The first and least typical of the Spencer Tracy/Katherine Hepburn teamings has Citizen Kane pretentions but is really a murder mystery, with great early '40s atmosphere.

The Phantom Lady (1944)

Ella Raines sets out to clear her boss of murder.  Based on a Cornell Woolrich novel.

The Mask of Dimitrios (1944)

Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet in a story by Eric Ambler.  Enough said.

Laura (1944)

Okay, they can't all be obscure.  Cop Dana Andrews falls in love with Gene Tierney's picture.  And who can blame him?

Green for Danger (1946)

English murder mystery set in a rural hospital during the V-1 barrage.  Alastair Sim (of Christmas Carol fame) plays a policeman who is both comic and clever.

The Killers (1946)

A Hemmingway short story as the launch pad for a noir mystery starring Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner.  The investigators are Edmond O'Brien and Sam Levene, this time playing it straight.

Crack-Up (1946)

An almost Hitchcock-grade mystery of a man, Pat O'Brien, who claims to have been in a train wreck no one else remembers.  Supporting cast includes film noir veteran Claire Trevor and Herbert Marshall, still soldiering on, but now in featured roles.

Deadline at Dawn (1946)

Great year, 1946.  This one's a little talky, but the talk is by Clifford Odets, so it's okay.  Susan Hayward stars.

Ride the Pink Horse (1947)

A nice little film noir directed by and starring Robert Montgomery.  The solid supporting cast includes another noir stalwart, Thomas Gomez.

My Favorite Brunette (1947)

Right in the middle of the Philip Marlowe craze, Paramount came out with this burlesque of Chandleresque PI films staring Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, and Peter Lorre.

Out of the Past (1947)

Robert Mitchum in the film noir, with Jane Greer and Kirk Douglas.   If only Mitchum had played Philip Marlowe at this age.  More cult film than obscure film, but it had to make the list.

The Naked City (1948)

Maybe the first real police procedural, with Barry Fitzgerald, Don Taylor, and the real New York City.

1950s

Mystery Street (1950)

I thought we'd never get out of the '40s.  This little film is an early (but not the earliest) celebration of crime scene forensics.  It stars another Ricardo, Ricardo Montalban.

D.O.A. (1950)

Another cult film.  Good location work in LA and San Franciso and a great performance by Edmond O'Brien as a man trying to solve his own murder.  Gets me every time.

Cry Danger (1951)

Dick Powell as a parolee out to prove his innocence (or profit from his time in jail).  Nice location work in backstreet LA.  Rhonda Fleming and William Conrad in support.

On Dangerous Ground (1952)

Tough cop Robert Ryan meets blind Ida Lupino.  Great Bernard Hermann score.

23 Paces to Baker Street (1956)

Van Johnson, also blind, tries to solve a crime in London.  Vera Miles, one of Hitchcock's crushes, stands by him.

1960s

The List of Adrian Messenger (1963)

John Huston directed this murder mystery starring George C. Scott.  One of Herbert Marshall's last films, released an amazing thirty-three years after Murder!

Harper (1966)

Not exactly obscure, since it stars Paul Newman, but a solid PI film with a great cast, including Lauren Bacall.  Based on The Moving Target by Ross Macdonald.

Marlowe (1969)

For my money, a successful transportation of Philip Marlowe to the Summer of Love, starring James Garner.  Based on Chandler's The Little Sister.

1970s

The Carey Treatment (1972)

If you need a 1970s fix, this is the film.  Blake Edwards directed James Colburn and Jennifer O'Neill.  Based on Michael Crichton's A Case of Need.

Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973)

As I wrote in a recent post, this authentic little mob picture is the anti-Godfather.  It stars Robert Mitchum, a veteran of 1940s noir, and Peter Boyle. 

The Midnight Man (1974)

Another aging noir star, Burt Lancaster, starred in, co-wrote, and co-directed this mystery set on a college campus.  It also stars Susan Clark and Cameron Mitchell.

Did they make movies after 1974?  I'll look into it and get back to you.

STAY CREATIVE

In January, my niece Dona and I went out to California to help my sister-in-law's 90th birthday. Dona and I stayed at a small, but very nice, hotel in Red Bluff, CA. In our room was a note pad on the night stand. The hotel's logo was on one corner of the pad, "Holiday Inn Express." In the left top corner in large all caps letters, "STAY CREATIVE." I brought the note pad home and it's on my night stand.

Since January, I've wondered many times, why would a hotel have this on a note pad? Some of you may know, and I'm quite sure it's possible to look it up and find an answer or at least an explanation. But I haven't done that. Maybe I wanted somehow to be creative about it?

Actually, a few ideas come to mind. Perhaps it's a message for the many business people who stay in these hotels. Reminding them to stay creative and think outside the box for their sales techniques. Or it could be a way to remind tourist there are many things to do and see in the area. Don't just visit mountains, visit the ocean.

As an artist, singer/songwriter or even a mystery writer, it suggest that your mind can sub-consciously be in a creative mode all the time. Most of us who write don't consciously think of staying creative, but all of us know our muse is generally on duty staying creative.

For instance, last night I went to a local restaurant to listen to a singer/songwriter that I had not heard in two or three months. I went by myself but two couples I knew were there so I sat with them. My friend, Wake Eastman began singing and I ordered food. A small crowd was in this dining room but people do sort of come and go. It is a restaurant after all.

It was time to "stay creative" as this turned out to be a great place to people watch. Men and women both came in with cowboy hats on their heads. Not unusual in central TX but a couple older ladies were loaded down with turquoise jewelry and knee-length skirts and cowboy boots. Men who definitely looked like prosperous ranchers except their protruding bellies and soft-looking hands and fancy-looking boots told they were either drugstore cowboys or retired.

One lady just screamed out to be a character in a story for sure. Her skirt was touching mid-knee and was a muddy brown. Her blouse was flowered and worn outside her waist, but the neck line was low and her breast tops were quite prominent. She had curly blonde hair definitely colored from a bottle, But her face was the kicker...her make-up screamed south side streetwalker but her face was wrinkled and had to be on the north side of sixty. I don't like to call anyone "old-looking." I'm no spring chicken myself, however, I think both men and women might be smart to dress age appropriate.

Maybe the hotel pad hasn't any hidden meaning after all, but guess what? Thinking about this pad, gave me an idea to write this article.
STAY CREATIVE everyone.

The Digital Detective, Wall Street part 2

continued from last week…
The Best of Times…

Systems programmers held a unique niche in the multiple mainframe corporate structure. We didn’t practice ordinary commercial programming but were responsible for keeping the software side running– the operating systems, telecommunications, and utilities. The best of us knew assembly language– the cryptic machine instructions that underpin more or less human-readable languages like C, Cobol, Fortran, and Java. We dealt in bits and bytes, binary and buzzwords, not credits, debits, and balance sheets.

Plane atop 77 Water St

Walston was flush. Shortly after I joined, they moved into their fancy new skyscraper at 77 Water Street, a few steps south of Wall. It featured an artificial stream, a padded soda dispenser shaped like a floppy-eared dog, elevators illuminated like the night sky, and a full-size sculpture of a biplane on the roof. You can see it in the opening fly-over sequence of the disappointing movie The Forgotten; there you can spot the airplane still atop 77 Water.

Walston’s cast of characters included my boss Alex, his boss and vice president Paul, and an assistant vice president, Jim. Brokerage firms contain nearly as many vice presidents as they do brokers. The wrinkle in the relationship was Jim had originally hired Paul who passed him on the corporate ladder. Nearing his 25^th year with the firm, Jim became marginalized, holding down a desk but no responsibility. Upon retirement, he planned to buy a Land Rover, move to South Africa, cultivate a mustache, and live a life of alternating adventure and leisure. As the weeks ticked away, that’s all he talked about.

Wall Street and Financial District

Walston’s third floor contained two sections: the computer room and offices occupied by Arthur Anderson overseen by a Walston executive with the musical name Glenn Miller. As systems programmer, I was the rare programmer allowed in the computer room. That drew the attention of Arthur Anderson.

It wasn’t unusual for large corporations to provide offices for their accounting firm, but it wasn’t kosher for one’s auditors to use provided offices to perform work for other companies. The rules for AA were different. As one of the accounting wonks said, saving office space didn't hurt anyone. It may have been true, but violating rules exemplified the looseness of managerial oversight.

Toad in the Hole

Walston brought in two consultants, guys who would tell a company the same common sense advice at five times the price of listening to their employees. That’s one reason I later became a consultant– companies pay to listen to you.

As far as I was concerned, this was more background noise, but one day my boss Alex called me into his office. There sat the consultants and two Arthur Anderson guys amid palpable tension. They wanted me to perform a task: write a program to scan files and ‘correct’ fields, i.e, numbers within the file.

I pointed out I didn’t do that kind of commercial programming and this was far more suitable a task for one of the Cobol programmers. No matter, they assured me, they wanted me. I should be flattered.

Who’s the analyst who designed this? I asked, not feeling the least flattered. I’ll talk with him. No, said the consultant, only you. The Anderson guys nodded while my boss frowned.

Reasonably, I protested that the Cobol programmers possessed the pension suite’s data structure templates. Without them, I had no idea what the data was. It would be like blindly machining a part while they withheld the blueprints, which could damage the data.

The Arthur Anderson guys exchanged glances. My boss started to fidget. The background noise sounded like a clanging alarm. Practiced deceivers they weren't. Something felt wonky but I didn’t know what. They didn’t quite say I had no need to know, only I needn’t be concerned.

Where did a shift of responsibility end and liability begin? Were they buying blind loyalty or blindness? A light bulb went on. I raised my last objection. What about the lack of an audit trail, I asked. Assembler language would bypass all the record and financial controls.

Of course they knew that. They went into a huddle. Moments later, my boss said coldly, “We’re done here. You’re dismissed.”

I slogged back to my desk feeling dark and dysphoric. With good reason: shortly the VP called me in. He informed me the firm would cut my salary and no longer pay my tuition. Alan, the office political toady, would replace me.

Fire and Ice

Suddenly I didn't feel so brilliant. A thunderstorm had squalled up out of the blue. A kid like me didn’t make or have a lot of money and I desperately needed my classes. It didn’t dawn on me to ask why they didn’t dismiss me. Maybe they feared what they thought I knew or wanted to keep tabs on me, but my ego suggested they kept me because Alan the toady was incompetent and incapable of doing my job. He didn’t know machine language but he knew Cobol… and probably knew where to find the questionable data templates. Meanwhile, they were slamming me for questioning orders.

My boss and his boss cold-shouldered me. They almost fired me when the payroll department screwed up and continued paying my tuition, but as was pointed out, that was their error, not mine. We were at loggerheads, but they needed me as much as I needed the job.

The VP’s secretaries treated me with surprising sympathy and kindness. I don’t know how much they knew, but one took me out to lunch and the other gave me a small gift. In the cold light of Walston, they radiated warmth.

In the outside world, Ross Perot had been tacking his way through Wall Street, taking over data processing services, a forerunner of out-sourcing. When the F.I. DuPont scandal hit, Perot stepped in and bought the firm.

I received a cagey call from EDS, the company Perot founded, asking if I’d come to work for them. EDS had a rigid stiff-necked (most said 'tight ass') reputation with a dated, regimented dress code– white shirts, narrow dark ties, grey suits, pants with cuffs, shoes with laces. They subjected potential employees and their spouses to a battery of interviews. Creative thinking was not encouraged. EDS employees liked the money but not one I knew liked the company. I politely declined.

We picked up a programmer from DuPont. Perot had arrived in NYC and put his DuPont troops through sort of a surprise dress parade. As he marched down the line of employees, he came across a girl who wore the fashion of the day– a miniskirt– and fired her on the spot. At Walston, we didn’t mind miniskirts and hired her.

Word on the Street

One day, employees awoke to a lead article by the Wall Street Journal announcing Ross Perot would take over the computing facility of Walston. Vice President Paul turned shockingly white– he hadn't heard even a whisper– but brokerage houses mint vice presidents like they print stock certificates. The company denied the story and things sort of returned to normal.

Except an odd and unsettling thing happened. One month from his 25^th year and retirement, Jim, the marginalized AVP found himself called into the VP’s office. Paul, the vice president, fired him. Full retirement gone, no Land Rover, no African adventure, no life of well-earned leisure.

Another discreet call came in for me. The woman on the other end asked me to identify myself, asked if I could talk privately, then said, “Please hold for Mr. Perot.”

Despite what I've heard before and since, Ross was polite, even gracious, and I was flattered he asked me to work for him. But, as I pointed out, I attended university full-time, I wasn’t as regimented as his usual workers, I enjoyed a bachelor life, and– thinking of Perot’s cozy relationship with Richard Nixon– our politics didn’t mesh. He’d famously said he didn’t like gunslingers and lone wolves– and I was the epitome.

He said, “Son, thank you for being honest,” and wished me well. I wondered why he wanted me.

Take Two

Once again, employees learned the news not from their own company but from the WSJ: For the second time within weeks, employees woke to a Journal article confirming Perot would be taking over Walston’s computing center. Again, our shocked vice president had been left out of the loop.

When Perot dropped in to inspect the troops, he spotted the same girl in her minidress we’d hired from F.I. DuPont and again fired her on the spot. Can’t say Perot wasn't consistent.

Days later, Walston fired Vice President Paul two weeks from his 25^th year– and full retirement. The firm dismissed the consultants and Arthur Anderson's office underwent a shake-up. Programmers found themselves not only locked out of the computer room, but locked out of the computers.

Except for me. A good systems programmer could run the shop without operators, without analysts, without programmers. Perot didn't trust Walston's people, which explained the recruitment calls to me.

A panicked EDS crew asked where certain files could be found. They asked if I could find backups of older versions. They asked if I knew anything about original programs and data alterations. Unsurprisingly, those hotly desired files were the same my bosses asked me to ‘correct.’ The unasked question finally arose: were they corrections or were they coverups?

I dug into the files only to learn what Arthur Anderson already knew. It appeared Walston’s proprietors had embezzled the company’s retirement fund. Now it made sense why they fired the AVP days from his 25^th year. That’s why they fired the VP days from his 25^th year. The money was gone, reflected in the records my bosses and Arthur Anderson (or certain employees within Anderson) desperately wanted 'corrected'. The scheme was so compartmentalized, I doubted how much any one party in my department knew, remembering my boss, Alex, claimed the instructions came from on high. "Just follow orders," he said.

I'd been lucky: What might have happened to the joker who tampered with the data? Alan had been lucky: Unable to find his assets with both hands, he'd botched the changes although he left an audit trail.

Trinity Church framed
by Wall Street

How The Mighty Had Fallen

Perot took over Walston, folding it in with DuPont and again saving Wall Street considerable embarrassment. Two and a half years later, he lost his financial shirt and dismantled a hemorrhaging DuPont Walston. Perot arranged for Congress to give him a special late night $15-million tax break, causing an outcry of socialism for the wealthy when the bill became public knowledge.

Dark forces on Wall Street gleefully watched Perot depart, some accusing him of trickery, some suing him on the way. Whatever the truth of that matter, Walston had been rotting internally before Perot arrived.

Arthur Anderson survived with their reputation barely sullied. Indeed, Anderson and Walston’s Glenn Miller caught more flack for the Four Seasons Nursing Centers scandal than the internal decay within their own firms. It would take the Enron affair to bring down Arthur Anderson.

My services remained in demand and I moved on, still on Wall Street, starting my masters degree before joining forces with two of the earliest software entrepreneurs.

Imagination Noir

In imaginative moments, it’s easy to envision the kernel of a mystery intrigue plot. I picture a John Grisham novel, a storyteller's movie in my mind like The Firm. Had Walston’s board reacted viciously and violently, I might have found myself in a dire plot, on the run for my life with a miniskirted damsel as VPs, AVPs, and Anderson drones dropped dead around me. Excited movie audiences would gasp between mouthfuls of popcorn, women would cry, and children would whisper, “He’s so bwave.”

Maybe a dastardly plot isn't so far-fetched considering the mysterious suicide (or assassination?) of Enron executive Clifford Baxter, about to testify before Congress. But in the world of finance, what’s crooked isn’t always an actionable crime. Commit a fraud of sufficient size and business will hush it up rather than prosecute– not unless something can be gained in the guise of ‘investor confidence’.

Footnote

The case ended with a gentler tone: I commuted to Wall Street on the Staten Island Ferry. One surprisingly sunny afternoon, I spotted Paul, the ex-vice president. He said hello and sat down across from me. Once again open and pleasant, he appeared the man I’d once liked– and could come to like again.

We didn’t talk about Walston. He explained he moved with his aging mother to Keene Valley in upstate New York. Turning his back on Wall Street, this former executive now worked as a carpenter. He spoke of small town pleasures where old men sat in front of the local hardware store whittling and discoursing upon merits of lawnmowers. For the first time in decades, he felt relaxed and at peace.

That pleased me. Paul wasn’t a bad man, merely a figure caught up in the machinating machinery of Wall Street. He offered his hand and we shook warmly.

Looking back, I think his chat was sort of penance, kind of an apology without the words. That was decent, more than many people would have done. And it was enough.

Besides, I’d eventually consult for banks, institutions where further fruits of fraud lay concealed beneath a public veneer.

Candy Is Dandy

by John M. Floyd

It's funny how we get started reading new authors. For me it happens sometimes by chance but usually as the result of a recommendation by fellow readers or writers. And, more and more, I've begun seeking out books and stories written by my fellow SleuthSayers. However it comes to pass, it's always fun to discover new writers.

Cider House Rules author John Irving says, in his memoir My Movie Business, that one summer when he was a little boy at the beach, someone pointed to a pale, ungainly man in a yellow bathing suit and said it was Ogden Nash, the writer. "To this day, I don't know that it was," Irving continues, "but I shall carry the image of that funny-looking man, 'the writer,' to my grave," and adds that he immediately took up reading Nash's humorous verse. I'm sure that he, like me and millions of other fans, is glad he did.

I can recall seeing only a few photos of Mr. Nash, and I think he looked like a pretty regular guy, maybe a bit scholarly. For some reason I tend to confuse him with Bennett Cerf, whose face I do remember well, from the panel of What's My Line?--but I'm more familiar with Nash's work. I even have a volume of his collected poetry on the bookshelf about ten feet from where I'm sitting right now. Occasionally I open it to a random page and read a few lines, and whenever I do I seem to feel a little better for the rest of the day.

If you don't already know Ogden Nash, here's some quick background. America's most accomplished writer of light verse, Nash was born in Rye, New York, in 1902 but moved to Baltimore in his thirties and lived there until his death in 1971. He was at different times a teacher, a playwright, a lyricist, and an editor at Doubleday, but above all he was a poet, publishing more than 500 poems in venues from The New Yorker to The Saturday Evening Post.

A few interesting pieces of trivia: he was descended from the brother of General Francis Nash, who gave his name to Nashville, Tennessee; his family lived briefly in a carriage house owned by Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts; and his death was the result of an infection from, of all things, improperly prepared coleslaw.

Making a word perfect

I recall that my friend David Dean once mentioned in a SleuthSayers column the fact that some words sound good even though they might not be real words. I agree, and I've used them in my own fiction--usually as verbs--when someone THUNKs his head on the sidewalk, or a helicopter whopwhopwhopwhops its way overhead, or a boomerang whickers through the air. (Yes, I know that's called onomatopoeia, but unless they're Hawaiian I'm not fond of words that have four vowels in a row. I'd rather just say it's "using words that sound like the sounds they make.")

Ogden Nash loved to create nonexistent words, especially in rhyme, and instead of being distracting because of their difference, they were wonderfully appropriate. Of babies, he once wrote in a poem, "A bit of talcum is always walcum," and on the subject of wasps, "He throws open his nest with prodigality, but I distrust his waspitality." My favorite is probably "If called by a panther, don't anther."

Trying to imitate the master

While it probably wouldn't be ethical to use examples of Nash's "invented-or-otherwise-zany-word" poems in their entirety here, I have no such qualms about showing you some of my own. The first of the following ditties was published in Futures, the second in Rhyme Time, and the third in a magazine called--believe it or not--Volcano Quarterly. The last two have never even been submitted (and probably for good reason).

SHOCK VALUE

When chased by a crazed wildebeest,

I preferred not to just kildebeest;

So I found a snapshotta

My wife's cousin Lotta,

Which immediately stildebeest.

SOUTH OF SAUDI

If the country of Yemen

Were governed by Britain,

Their gas would be petrol,

Their dresses tight-fittin'.

And sports fans could watch,

For the price of a ticket,

Arabian knights

Playing Yemeni cricket.

POMPOUS ASHES

An inactive volcano named Dora

Was implanted with buildings and flora;

And some say since the mayor

Has his offices there,

It puts out more hot air than befora.

DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH

Your investments crashed? Your money's gone?

Be neither sad nor jealous;

It isn't really gone--it just

Belongs to someone ealous.

THE PAIN IN SPAIN

She ran with the bulls at Pamplona;

One stuck her, another steptona.

This kind of goofy wordplay is a pleasure to write, and I can't help thinking that Mr. Nash--yellow bathing suit or not--was probably a happy and delightful person in real life. I wish I'd known him.

I've heard he is possibly best remembered for the expression "candy is dandy but liquor is quicker."

Neither one is as much fun as his light verse.

No. 1197

It came in the mail.
Writers generally look forward to the mail arriving. Not the bills and junk mail, but the contracts and checks a writer gets for creating work good enough to be put up in print. And sure, we get a little ambivalent, with both hopes and fears, upon receiving those first envelopes from an agent, or editor since they could be a positive or a negative. They could be a glorious validation of our creative genius (also called an acceptance) or the dreaded rejection (what do they know?).

This particular piece of mail I got last month could be called an acceptance of sorts, but not one I was looking for at the time. Can't say I was too surprised to get it though because it's happened twice before in the ten years since we moved here. But why now? After all, we had a trip planned with non-refundable airline tickets, and as everyone knows, airlines recently raised their prices for a customer to change the dates on their tickets.

Guess I could have asked for a postponement, but the letter said it would only take a day or two of my time. Okay, there was a four-day window before flight time, so I took a chance. If circumstances looked bad after I got there, then I could always request a postponement at that time and ask for a later date when my schedule seemed to be more open. In any case, I know they really don't want me. None of them have in the past, even though it has been my desire to participate.

You see, once again my name has come up and I have been summoned for jury duty. My juror number is 1197 and I am supposed to appear in county court at 8:30 AM on a specified day. A lot of instructions are listed in the letter, plus there is a questionnaire form I am supposed to fill out and bring with me. The first part of the form is all background on me. I've known me for a long time, so that part's easy. Next, I check the box for Post Grad and then the NO box for Previous Jury Service.

Now I come to all the little check boxes concerning other background about me, the part which has always gotten me bounced from a jury panel in the past. I check YES for Have You Ever Been Involved In A Court Proceeding Other Than Jury Service. This is quickly followed by checks in the box for The Case Was Civil, also one in the Criminal box, again for I Was A Party To The Case and for I Was A Witness To A Case. Seems my 25 years in law enforcement tends to mean one lawyer or the other in a pending trial has concerns about me sitting on their jury panel. But, according to the rules, no occupation is automatically excused from jury duty. Thus, I am required to go through the motions.

So, the night before, as instructed in the summons, I call the designated telephone number after 5:30 PM. The taped message says numbers 601 through 1,000 must report on the following morning for jury service. Numbers 1,001 through 1,250 are on standby, must be prepared to respond at an hour's notice and are required to call the designated telephone number again at Noon on the following day to see if they are needed then. Okay, looks like No. 1197 has got a second chance with the standbys. I sleep well that night. Comes Noon, the taped message now says the standby group does not need to report, our service obligation as jurors has been fulfilled.

Ah yes, rejected again.

Now, we all know people called for jury duty often make jokes about trying to get out of jury service, some of them serious about their trying or their success. I have even laughed about some of the ploys people used or claimed to have used to get off jury duty. In fact, I found one set of circumstances so bizarre that I used it in a short story ("Independence Day") about one of my Holiday Burglars who ended up on a jury panel for a fellow burglar. In short, it seems a real-life potential female juror raised her hand when the judge asked if there was any reason why any of  the potential jurors in front of him should not serve on a jury.

"Yes ma'am," inquired the judge upon seeing her hand.
"I'm not feeling well," was her reply.
"Not feeling well? What is the problem?"
"I think it's the medicine my doctor is giving me for my cocaine addiction."
"Ma'am, you are excused."

Okay, becoming a juror can be an inconvenience. And, okay, people can joke about different ways to get off jury duty. But, I am pretty sure those same people would quickly be screaming about THEIR RIGHTS if the peer jury system was somehow abolished. So, if a little of my time being spent as a juror is one of the requirements for me to live in a free society, then I'm willing to to have the inconvenience of being called. I know that if I were innocent of an accused crime, I would want some jurors who were fair-minded and interested in true justice, not someone who is aggravated about being summoned and is trying to get out of their duty.

Now on the other hand…

How I Got This Way - Literature and Life

Fran's blog on Adolescent Sexist Swill - which was GREAT - got me thinking about the books I read as a child and young adult.  Which ones still hold up?  Which ones don't?  Which ones do I still have on my shelves?  Which ones did I get rid of under cover of darkness?  I'm going to stick to the mystery/adventure/thriller domain, and so, here's my calls:

The ones that hold up:

Sherlock Holmes - I'm up for a trip to 221B Baker Street just about any time.  Just please, don't try to make me like the modern takes on Sherlock.  I want him lean, addicted to tobacco and/or cocaine, and totally emotionally detached.  (My favorite actor in the role was Jeremy Brett, with Basil Rathbone running a close second.)

Robert Louis Stevenson & Alexandre Dumas - the two greatest adventure story writers ever, imho.  One of my first great loves was Alan Breck in "Kidnapped".  And while the sequels to "The Three Musketeers" are overwrought to the point of pain ("The Vicomte de Bragelonne" leaps to mind), the original has almost everything anyone could hope for.  The rest is in "The Count of Monte Cristo".  (Sadly, while I love 1973/74 versions of "The Three Musketeers", I have not yet seen what I consider a decent production of "The Count of Monte Cristo" - they keep wanting to happy up the ending for Mercedes...)

Nancy Drew - you've got to start somewhere, and she was independent, fun, rescued all her friends, and solved the mysteries.  Way to go, Nancy!

Shirley Jackson - I still say the scariest movie ever made was the original "The Haunting" with Julie Harris and Claire Bloom.  Check out the books:  besides the original "The Haunting of Hill House" allow me to recommend "We Have Always Lived in the Castle".  Many of us might recognize an old, old fantasy come strangely to life.

Edgar Allan Poe - "The Cask of Amontillado" - "for the love of God, Montresor!"  "Yes, for the love of God."  Wow.

The ones that hold up, with reservations:

H. P. Lovecraft - I gave away my complete set to a young nerd who came back about a week later, strangely gray, and gave them all back to me.  He couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, and might have been damaged for life.  All I know is Lovecraft scared the crap out of me, I remember some of his stories vividly, a few of them were so brilliant I am still in awe of what he did, and I have no need to ever read them again.  (Same thing with "Johnny Got His Gun" by Dalton Trumbo - book and movie - saw it once, read it for some reason after that, had nightmares both times, I am done.)

My adolescent sexist swill (Thanks for the phrase, Fran!):

• The Saint, a/k/a Simon Templar, by Leslie Charteris
• Michael Shayne by Brett Halliday
• Mike Hammer by Mickey Spillane
• James Bond by Ian Fleming

I read all of these, mainly for the sex, because where else was there any in early 1960's literature?  Violent, cathartic, sometimes funny (especially Mike Shayne), sometimes educational, and a great way to really rile up the teachers.  (Girls weren't supposed to be reading them.) 

I will say that at least the Saint had Patricia Holm, who was as much of an adventurer as he was.  But then Charteris dropped Patricia. Sigh. And the James Bond novels had some strong women– but most of them, in the end, all went soft and cuddly, even Pussy Galore, which I never believed for one minute…  :)  But at least the locations were fantastic. 

I haven't run across any of Brett Halliday's in a long time, so I don't know how well he holds up, but I have re-read some of all of the others, and...  for me, they don't.  I can see the line, however, leading from these to Robert Parker's Spenser and Hawk.

My adolescent forerunners:

Agatha Christie - Still the classic, especially when it comes to plotting.  

James M. Cain - Mildred Pierce (the book) gets better every year! 

Dashiell Hammett - ah.  Nick and Nora. 

Rex Stout - I am trying to collect the complete works, and I almost have.  When it comes to media presentations, I want my Nero Wolfe (like Sherlock Holmes) unblemished by Hollywoodization - overweight, misogynistic, lazy, gourmandizing, and brilliant.  (I did like the Timothy Hutton version, although he's not how I've always pictured Archie Goodwin, and Maury Chaykin was not large enough...)

Well enough for now, I'm off to re-read "Death of a Doxy"!

Backtalk

I recently sent the novel I have been working on to various GFRs (Gullible First Readers) and am busily contemplating their wisdom.  One note from James Lincoln Warren set me thinking.

He commented on which of the bad guys in my book were punished and which weren't.  I replied that I had expected one of them – we will call him Smith – to get away unscathed.  As it is, he wound up getting scathed, in spades.

What happened?  Well, someone registered such a  strong and eloquent protest I had to reconsider.  Who was it that insisted Smith pay for his sins?

It was another character in the book.  This person – sorry, but I will call him Jones – in effect said: "It's not fair!  You've built me up through the novel and never given me anything important to do.  I have the personality and the motive to seek revenge.  Give me the method and opportunity and get out of my way.  Remember Chekhov's gun!"

What my eloquent fictional friend is referring to is a dramatic principle first stated by the great Russian playwright: If a gun is hanging on the wall in the first act, it must be fired in the last.  Mr. Jones, was claiming to be that gun, primed and ready.

I have known a lot of writers to talk about their characters "coming alive" and  convincing them to change a planned action.  I believe I have only experienced it twice.

Besides Jones, the other guilty party was Cora Neal, writer of women's fiction and beloved wife of Leopold Longshanks, star of many of my short stories.  They have always had a somewhat testy relationship - well, here is the first sentence of the first story in the series.

"For heaven's sake, Shanks, try to behave yourself today."

They love each other, but Cora does seem to spend a lot of time chewing him out for sins real or imagined.  But in one recent story after Shanks had done something outrageous and I expected Cora to complain accordingly, she laughed instead.

I was stunned.  It was a completely different side of her personality.  And it has effected how I have written about her ever since.  (You can see that more clearly in last year's "Shanks Commences" than in this year's "Shanks' Ride").

So let me end with a question for you writers out there: do your characters ever pick fights with you?  If so, who wins?