Joyce and I went to this session featuring Mo Hayder, Joan Druett, Peter Temple and Philippe Claudel with Mike Johnson in the chair.
Philip:It was an interesting session but somehow it didn’t really catch fire, did you think, Joyce?
Joyce: It was a bit flat wasn’t it. Mike Johnson the chair didn’t seem vastly knowledgable about crime fiction and some of his questions were drearily longwinded. His opening gambit was about genre fiction and the perception that genre fiction is somehow inferior to literary fiction. What did you think about what that cheeky minx Joan Druett said?
Philip: You mean the bit where she blamed libraries for categorising fiction into genres? That was a bit rich considering that bookshops do the same and so do publishers in the first place.
Joyce: She better watch herself, don’t dis libraries Joanie. Mo Hayder’s take on the genre issue is that the lines are currently blurred with people like Kate Atkinson and John Banville previously considered to be literary authors moving into crime
Philip: Philippe Claudel said that in France his novel “Grey souls” was not considered to be crime fiction but in some of the English speaking countries it was crime rather than literary fiction. In fact, he didn’t seem to be a particular fan of crime fiction and said he’d read a lot around ten years ago and became disappointed about the endings of thrillers, finding life to be much less simplistic.
Joan Druett has spread herself over various genres from crime to historical to romance and it sounds like her publisher had as big an effect as any, suggesting write a sea story but make sure she had a body or two in it.
Joyce: Violence, bloodshed and the body count was the topic up for debate. Mo Hayder looking as uttering fantastic as ever, said she is unflinching about how she describes the violence in her books. She wants to be honest with the reader and describe the real effect of violence, brain matter and all. She imposes no censorship on subject matter and trusts her reader to respond in a moral manner.
Philip: Philippe Claudel, who is very serious, said he was more interested in mental rather than physical violence. In his wonderful French he talked about “blurd and vialonts” in books! Peter Temple said he wasn’t averse to a bit of biff and bash in his books. There are some bits where violence occurs to a really ratbag character and he realises the readers enjoy this. He said there’s not much need to go in for really graphic violence or sex in books as you can’t compete in this area with movies!
Joyce: Yup Philippe Claudel was priceless: he said “the writer is a terrorist of the mind, of the soul”; he’s shaping up to be the Eric Cantona of French literature. I liked Peter Temple’s distinction between violence as retribution and the violence of indifference, the true horror of people who don’t care. Your starter for ten Philip, who did this motley crew of authors confess to like reading?
Philip:Joan Druett said she liked Peter Temple. Mo plumped for Thomas Harris who she said was a most maligned writer and she is also a great fan of that excellent American writer, Pete Dexter. Claudel had two European writers who crossed the line between literary and crime fiction: the Italian novelist Leonardo Sciascia and the Swiss novelist and playwright Friedrich Durrenmatt. Peter Temple reads mostly history but when he reads fiction he’s especially keen on Elmore Leonard, Richard Stark, Charles McCarry and John Updike. The latter he feels is the greatest of greats (and he’s never written a crime novel). As always, they seemed to run out of time before they could do questions from the floor but the questions weren’t exactly riveting were they Joyce – except for the lady talking about the large books!
Joyce: A few theories were bandied about why crime fiction titles were taking on the size of the yellow pages; a lack of editing, publisher pressure for more words and the rise of the bestseller concept. But hey Philip is big really better?!
Philip: Well, interestingly, Joyce, Junot Diaz was talking about fellow Domincan Portifiro Rubirosa. But to get back to a more seemly subject, it is in the airport bookshop where Peter Temple talked about someone he called James Baldacci who he said write crap (did he mean Mr B. and Mr Patterson ?)
18 May 2008 at 6:17 pm
I am so pleased that someone else has voiced my concern about the ‘bigger is better’ school of publishing. Seldom do I read a book these days that doesn’t have at least 50+ pages of superfluous blah blah in the middle. Who needs that bulge around the middle? Publishers. Greedy! Filling pages with flim flam to make their books more expensive and flash looking, conning unwitting readers into believing they are getting value for money. It is not about quantity guys- you should know that. Some of the best books I have ever read have had less than 200pgs. But, what do you do? Who listens to the readers anyway?
20 May 2008 at 9:49 am
I attended this session at the festival, and it was one of the biggest disappointments. Oh, what it could have been with a knowledgable and energetic chair. The organisers chose the wrong person for the job. Thank God Joan piped up with comments, (even if they affronted the sensibilities of the librarians, who I hope won’t be too viscious in their reprisals) and even started asking the other panellists questions to get things moving. There was the occassional gem, but it was all lost in sssllllooooooowwwww pace, and long silences and five questions in one from the chair.
21 May 2008 at 10:53 am
Vanda we’ll go easy on Joan.
Librarians are lovers not fighters!! Overall I think the choice of session chairs and many of the questions were poor with the notable exception of Finlay Macdonald and Paula Morris.
4 June 2008 at 1:45 pm
I enjoyed the assessment and the comments! But I must post a bouquet for Graham Beattie (”Bookman Beattie” — see his blog) who hosted the session on maritime books I had the privilege of sharing with Mary McCallum and Barbara Else. The crime panel seemed an uncomfortable mix of characters, though it was such fun to meet the really gorgeous Mo Hayder. I felt throughout that it needed a much lighter touch, and did my best to contribute that. I am glad there is no umbrage held about my off-the-cuff comment about libraries cataloguing books into genres. Well, that’s what cataloguing is all about! Otherwise those inestimable and indispensible people, librarians, would not be doing their job. All along I wanted to say, crime is a genre, live with it. It seemed odd to me that the others were so keen to slide over into literary fiction, as writing crime is such fun.