A couple weeks back I finished reading a book called The Lemur by Benjamin Black, and one thing stood out in this short novel (novella, actually) that basically made me hate it. Well, two things.
1) This book is a mystery novel, and as such, bases a large portion of its narrative force behind the “whodunnit” aspect of the plot. Who killed the Lemur? That’s what we’re reading for. Now, of course, most good writers would make the story about more than just whodunnit, and Black tries to do that with his main character John Glass, an Irish American living in New York City, preparing to write the biography of his father-in-law, a New York bigwig in the cable industry. Black goes to great lengths to make John Glass seem intelligent and sympathetic, despite the fact that he openly cheats on his wife, smokes, drinks, is afraid of heights, and stereotypes the very city in which he lives (more on that in point 2). Throughout the novella, however, Glass does not change in any way that I can ascertain. He is still the same person at the end that he was at the beginning, the only difference being that he’s figured out who the killer is. Shocker.
Genre novels of this nature (mystery genre, here) that base their driving narrative force on something other than characters (whodunnit, who will get the girl, who will kill the dragon, who will die in the end) never leave a lasting impression on me. They end and they are over and you never need to think of them again because you already know the main crux of the story (who did it, who got the girl, who died). They are not character-centric, and thus remain shallow to the reader in the long term. You might get a lot of temporal enjoyment out of a mystery novel like The Lemur, but there’s no reason to think of this story ever again after you’ve read it. It has no lasting resonance, because the characters do not change in a way that reflects anything in a greater human sense. Those things that speak to humanity itself are the ones that leave resonance.
2) Benjamin Black made a very conscious decision in writing this novella, and that was in his choice of setting. It is set in New York City. Surprise. He uses this setting in a way that I think speaks to bad writing in general, and that is by relying on past narratives to set the scene for his characters. I realized he was doing this when I came across the following passage in the book:
Playful gusts of wind swooped along the street. A DHL delivery man, talking rapidly to himself, wheeled a loaded pallet into an open doorway. A dreadlocked derelict in a St. Louis Cardinals sweatshirt was arguing with a fat policeman. Beside a storm drain three ragged sparrows were fighting over a lump of bagel as big as themselves. Glass smiled to himself. New York.
Nearly closed the book right there. I reality, when I read this passage, I see not only John Glass smiling to himself, I see author Benjamin Black smiling to himself in front of his typewriter/computer. This is basically a smell-your-own-fart-because-you-love-the-scent-of-everything-you-do description, and it comes off as false and lazy. Black is relying on the fact that everyone should know what stereotypical New York City looks and feels like, and what he is doing in this passage is trying to bring about some sort of nostalgic reminiscence in the reader for this setting that they’ve seen so may times in books and on TV. He’s saying, “You know what New York City is like. Fill in the blanks.”
Maybe this rubs me the wrong way because I’m a lifelong Midwesterner, but that can’t be all of it. There’s bad writing here, and while Black’s vocabulary is somewhat daunting, his command of craft is lacking. He’s fallen into a trap of using a much-overused setting with the hope that readers will automatically drop into that setting, because we are all so familiar with it. I’ve never been to New York City, but I’ve seen enough TV and read enough books to know that you want to live in Manhatten, not Harlem, that the hemp-wearing, make-you-own-clothes-out-of-recycled-fabrics, paint-portraits-in-well-lit-studios, drink-beer-only-if-it’s-not-domestic people hang out in Greenwich Village. I know about Central Park: by day you jog and maybe play chess; by night you stay home in order to be alive the next day.
One thing I hate almost as much as preaching in fiction is laziness, and it shows itself all over the place in The Lemur. There are far too many stories set in New York City (and London), and The Lemur is a great example of why a writer should avoid overused settings (or plots, or characters, or themes). After a while, they ring false. The description lags, the writer knows they are in New York City and knows that everyone already has a preconceived notion of New York City, and, in truth, is banking on that preconceived notion. Benjamin Black didn’t want to show a different side of New York City that is rarely seen in media, he wanted to write a book set in the New York City all of us see on Friends every friggin’ day of the week. And he did that.
And it came off very unsatisfactory.
