C.B. Murphy  .:. Writer

So finally I find this incredible writer. How did I find her, I’m not even sure now. Oh, I remember, I was looking into “literary thriller” lists on the net and her name came up. Since Hitchcock did her “Strangers on a Train” I thought it would be fun to read it, then see the movie. [Also did this with John Lecarré's "The Spy Who Cam in from the Cold." More on that later.]

The first shock, besides how amazingly rare it was to read a book with a REAL PLOT that had fully developed characters. It made some of my recent attempts to pull stuff off the shelves at the airport bookstores (both literally and so to speak) so pathetic. Is it so hard to write like her? What I suspect happened is that the “tree” of writing broke somewhere along the line and “literary” people went one way and plot people another. The plot people were less fussy about the quality of their characters and the mysteries and thrillers (I’m making this up) drifted toward “genre” writing, with a heavy reliance on stock characters. Tremendous financial success of many of these writers (Stephen King, John Grishom, Micheal Crighton, etc.) made it seem like they had struck gold. On the other hand, the literary people, bolstered by a whole new industry of “MFAs” in writing, drifted toward a small, snobbier audience. The books more and more positioned character against plot, or made plot necessarily so “mundane” (or it’s twin “diverse and exotic”) that these books were not attractive cross-overs to the “genre” markets. To justify themselves, the literary industry has taken on various causes: women writers, gay writers, disabled writers, people of color writers and now “global literature” and soon to come “the green writers.” It’s all well intended (isn’t nearly everything, though?) but it has been devastating to the success of the “literary novel.” Soon, as Updike predicated, literary fiction will go the way of poetry: its readers and writers will be the same (small) population.

Back to Patricia Highsmith. It didn’t have to be this way–that’s what I get from reading her.
On top of it, she “should have” been (maybe she was, what do I know?) discovered by and included in the feminist/lesbian pantheon for her early lesbian themed work. But one suspects that writing under a pseudonym and writing in the 1950s might have worked against her, also the bisexuality of her biography. Clearly she had some explaining to do. But one suspects that the deeper problem is that she was an early genre crosser, with a deadly toe in mystery, the lit crowd didn’t need to be bothered by her.

In a recent trip to two Barnes & Nobles, this is what I found. The first store (Maplewood, MN) had two books but her, but they were not in fiction (where I looked first) but in mystery. The second store (Highland Village, St Paul, MN) didn’t have her at all! Yes, I, too, was shocked. How could it be that I finally find a writer that excites me and Barnes & Nobles, who carry SO MUCH CRAP, didn’t have the space, interest or market for her. And worse, what does this tell me about writing, even my writing?

A quick note on movie adaptations. I was shocked (God, I’m shocked a lot in this entry) to see how much Hitchcock (who I respect) had changed her story. Why did he change the main protagonist from an architect to a tennis pro? It made so sense. Most seriously, the entire book is built around the premise that a normal person could be lured by circumstances to commit a murder. In Hitchcock (yes, brave Hitchcock!) the good guy doesn’t even commit his murder! Was this part of the censorship issue in Hollywood at the time? Perhaps. But it shifted the story completely from a fascinating character study to a good guy/bad guy story. True the fight on the merry-go-round is breathtaking cinema, but it’s still just a fight and we know from the beginning who is going to win.

John Lecarré’s adapted movie “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold” had a similiar problem. In tone and character the movie was fairly accurate (though watching people talk is innately less interesting than being inside at least one of the talkers), but in the book, a very key scene occurs when the spy, Leamas, kills a guard. There is very little explanation about why he kills the guard in the book even though you are in “close third” and have access to his thoughts. One suspects it is frustration, it’s a sort of breakdown, but the victim is only half guilty. True he’s stalking Leamas (probably not to kill) but Leamas is already in a low security prison. In any case, Leamas’ murder of the guard reminded me of Camus’ character murdering the arab in “L’Etranger.” It’s an existentialist act, meaning to me, it’s complex, partly random, partly insane, partly a statement that killing and not killing are the same thing (which of course they aren’t). But in the movie, the merely skip that scene entirely and throw Leamas into a more serious prison without explanation. Of course, as a viewer we understand that his captors (bad communists) are capable of exacerbating his punishment by whim. We accept it. But again, at the core of the book is the mystery of who is Leamas and his impulsive murder makes distances him from our sympathy and understanding. In the movie, we see him more as a broken down and disillusioned man, not a man who could or would rise to sudden intense action. So, he is much less mysterious, hence less interesting.