More Fun Books

Reginald Hill

I don’t know what Vance is grousing about btw, since I recommended Zadie Smith fairly recently. On the boundaries between genre fiction and straight fiction, everyone should read Ken Worpole’s “Dockers and Detectives”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805271988/junius-20 .

I don’t know about John Wyndham going to the same school as Chandler, but I know PG Wodehouse did, and Wiki says CS Forester, too. Wodehouse and Chandler share a liking for literary allusions in unlikely places, so it’s possible there’s some shared-English-teacher-inspiration business going on.

Gah! Beaten to it. But Chandler was a Chicago-born English public schoolboy of Irish Quaker family, which may make him a rarer creature.

I’m afraid my straight-fiction tastes are not very obscure, so they may not be what’s being asked for. I go with mainstream favorites like ‘A Prayer for Owen Meaney’ (Irving), short stories by Flannery O’Connor, Milan Kundera’s ‘Unbearable Lightness of Being’, Hemingway’s ‘For whom the Bell Tolls’, ‘Absolute Friends’ by John le Carre, etc.

Also, though I’m breaking the rules, I’m currently reading Mervyn Peake’s “Gormenghast” series, which is technically fantasy but is uniquely literary.

Thanks for the recommendation. Brief and soon-regretted spasms of ill-tempered complaint get results!

Chris is quite right to remind me about Zadie Smith. And looking back over the Literature category, I see he and others have indeed recommended other non-SF (John Clare, to name one). Onward to James!

PS. I used to love Chandler too, but these days favor Hammett.

Since the very first CT post mentions Maturin, this is probably preaching to the choir, but everyone should read Patrick O’Brian. And there are 20 books in the Aubrey/Maturin series, so you’re in for a lot of fun if you haven’t read them already.
Also, Alan Furst has a new book just out, which is pretty good so far (I’m 40 pages in.) The rest of his books are fantastic.

So they’re ‘historical’ and ‘espionage’, respectively, but can anyone explain the difference between ‘genre fiction’ and ‘literature’ in terms other than ‘stuff I admit to reading’ and ‘stuff I brag about reading’?

bq. Baroness James’s novels convey a coherent philosophy of life more powerfully than many overtly political or theological books.

This is why I am so fond of mystery novels. The same is true for Ian Rankin, Frances Fyfield (whose books are much closer to the “general fiction” end of the novelistic spectrum than to “genre fiction”), the early Val McDermit (at least), Iain Pears, Deborah Crombie; for non-English ones, Fred Vargas.

And here’s a vote for Leonardo Sciascia’s crime fiction — short, bitter, amazing little bombs, dropped into the void: One way or Another — which is about the church as the mafia and the mafia as the Christian Democratic party – Equal Danger — and To each his own, my favorite, which begins with a feint and ends with … well, the ending is simply astonishing, blowing up the reader’s assumptions about the whole meaning of crime and its investigation. Sciascia is like Hammett in that he is that rare crime writer — one who actually doesn’t believe in methodological individualism. Crimes, in his universe, are certainly not accidents and aberrations, but the way the system keeps going. Somehow, living in Sicily from the 40s to the 80s made that a very realistic view. The blurb speak makes Sciascia the master of the Metaphysical crime story — the crime whose solution will end in other crimes, the Borges of mystery. But that is way too apolitical. He wrote mysteries with Jonathan Swift’s heart — full of a raging, mad indignation. And NYRB press recently republished all of them! Is that cool or what?

And for political polemic, the short book he wrote about the Moro affair is perhaps the most scathing political critique of the power structure in a modern Western ‘democracy’ ever. Pity there is no American Sciascia.

I read one PD James a while back and it bored me to tears. (And the TV adaptation the other Christmas was… the… slowest… zzzzzzz…) But, you know, I am a fan of Christopher Brookmyre. Who needs a moral philosophy when you can have gags about the consequences of using a mobile phone as a sex toy? Or surrealist bank robbers accompanied by One Step Beyond?

To be more serious, living British female authors of crime novels (or psychological thrillers) who I’d rather read: Louise Welch, Denise Mina, Stella Duffy, Val McDermid (sometimes), Sarah Dunant and (for lighter fun) Lindsay Davis. Plus a few dead ones who were always better than Agatha Christie: Gladys Mitchell, Josephine Tey, Marjorie Allingham, and the queen of them all, Dorothy Sayers.

Martin Cruz Smith has written many good books that happen to be mysteries, several featuring Arkady Renko, a detective in the decaying Soviet empire. The first “Gorky Park” is really excellent, as well as the last two “Havana Bay” and “Wolves Eat Dogs”.

Yes, but what is Adam recommending these days?

“If murders did not occur in her books …” Hold on, surely there are murders in straight fiction too. Although now you mention it, it’s hard to think of examples, not counting Shakespeare and Dostoevsky.

I am firmly convinced that both Rochester in Jane Eyre and Heathclife in Wuthering Heights are murderers.

Annie Prolux has a murder in her novel with the word “Postcard” in the title too.

I’m not at all keen on P.D. James – found the politics of her Dalgleish books to be a bit cloying, and the plotting stodgy and ponderous But de gustibus etc. Reginald Hill I like, but find hit-and-miss – Dalziel’s a wonderful character, but the mysteries are somewhat contrived. I’m very fond of Michael Dibdin when he’s on form – the first couple of Inspector Zen novels, plus Cosi fan Tutte are excellent. Heartily second the votes for Dorothy Sayer. For more recent noir, hard to beat James Crumley’s _The Last Good Kiss_ and _The Wrong Case_.

If we’re going back into the past, I’d also recommend Josephine Tey — great pplots, and great snese of the era. Interestingly, she is Barnard’s hero/heroine. I like her better than Sayers when I’m in the right mood, but obviously Sayers better when I’m in the other mood.

“hard to beat James Crumley’s The Last Good Kiss”

Perfection, IMO not approached by his later work.

within the genre:

The earlier Elmore Leonard (Stick, Swag, Freaky Deaky et al)

Leonardo Sciascia – Thanks to an earlier poster for the reminder. All worth reading.

Anthony Bourdain – Infamous chef and cookbook author is also an exceptional writer. Particularly recommended are Bone in the Throat, Bobby Gold (also released as The Bobby Gold Stories).

James Lee Burke is now a caricature of himself, and the things he writes are case-studies in repetitive and formulaic writing, but there are gems from earlier times. Lay Down My Sword and Shield, To the Bright and Shining Sun, The Lost Get Back Boogie.

outside the genre:

Haruki Murakami – try Norwegian Wood, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World et al.

Iain Banks – The Bridge

Gail Tsukiyama – The Samurai’s Garden

Yukio Mishima – short stories (there was a collection, I think called Forbidden Flowers or something)

Shusako Endo – I loved ‘When I Whistle’. Low-key.

Yasunari Kawabata – The Dancing Girl of Izu (really, really beautiful), Snow Country.

enjoy.

and I second the vote for Michael Dibdin (29).

I’ll also offer a nod to Peter Dickinson, although I prefer his Pibble series (particularly Sleep and His Brother) to his other mysteries.

I second the reading of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series. Twenty novels but they always feel like one book when you finish. I’ve read them three times and always find something new.

P.G. Wodehouse is always in order.

the Sherlock Holmes Canon
Raymond Chandler

Dittoes to Sciascia and Dickinson, but:

AFAICT (don’t read Italian) translations of Sciascia are uneven. Sicilian Uncles (not mysteries) seemed very well-written in translation, A Man’s Blessing not so; but To Each His Own which is I think a retranslation of A Man’s Blessing was much better. So, watch out.

Some Dickinsons are better than others, but for me it doesn’t divide Pibble/non-Pibble; my favorite is probably The Last House Party.