Wednesday, April 20, 2022

Mastering the Mystery Genre: The Problem with Theory Divorced from Facts

When I published Masters of the Humdrum Mystery ten years ago, I felt the problem with the academic approach to Golden Age crime writing for so many years was that it was airy theory divorced from down on the ground facts.  Over and over I read that Americans of the period wrote left-wing, mean streets, hard-boiled mystery while the Brits wrote right-wing, pastoral country house and village "cozy" mysteries.  American mystery writing was "masculine" while British mystery was "feminine."  

The proof?  Why, it was in the half dozen or so Golden Age era crime writers academics would condescend to look at: Chandler, Hammett, Christie, Sayers, Allingham, Marsh.  Obviously, this was a too-limited approach, even an ahistorical one, that gave only an incomplete picture of Golden Age mystery; but then most of the academics writing about the subject weren't actually historians by training, like I was.  They were, rather, English lit professors. Much of what they write is so theory and jargon laden it's unreadable to laypeople (and perhaps to themselves as well for all I know).  

So when I started reading a great variety of Golden Age mystery writers and got into the original sources from the period and realized how limited the typical academic approach was, I decided to write Masters, which is a far more rigorously informed, and I would say accurate, book.  Facts are what my anonymous Amazon critic disdains as "glutinous."  That's a word he derived from a critic I wryly quoted in my book, who said the same of the intensive facts-based investigative approach of Freeman Wills Crofts' indefatigable Inspector French.  

Facts may indeed be glutinous, because they stick.  The academic theory prevalent from 1980 to 2010 or so hasn't stuck; and it's been coming undone over the last decade, as the bloggers and "connoisseurs" (as my critic dismissively terms them) and the popular writers have done the real spadework and discovered where the bodies were buried.  Now, don't get me wrong, there has been good academic work in the last decade, but by and large academics have been playing catchup with the rest of us when it comes to the facts.  At least some of them have been paying attention to what we have been doing.  Smart boys and girls, those.

I come from an academic background; my father was a business professor who taught economics and international finance in South Dakota, Wisconsin, Alabama and Mexico.  I received my share of degrees, BA, MA, JD, PhD (I was introduced as a "professional student" once) and taught history for a short time.  I love good academic scholarship, but sometimes academia can be a bar to good scholarship, I have found. 

I was interested to find that one of the academics whose work I praised in Masters, Alison Light, is now an independent scholar.  Alison Light can really write and I have learned a lot from her.  Anyone who reads academic historian Douglas Greene's popular biography of John Dickson Carr, will learn a hell of a lot about the history of Golden Age crime writing through the life of one its masters (not humdrum at all); but of course traditional biography is frowned on by so many English lit types (not historians).  

I tried in Masters to engage with academics, but the book was ignored in the review journals.  It's since started to pop up in academic citations, as have my books on mystery writer Todd Downing and LGBTQ crime writers and themes, Murder in the Closet (Edgar nominated), but by anonymous Amazon reviewer gave me a taste of the academic response at its worst: petty, score-settling, deceptive and splenetic.  I sure don't miss that!

The internet is a mixed blessing.  Everyone has an opinion and freely expresses it, which is great up to a certain point, but not all opinions are equally informed.  There's a need for experts and they should be respected.  But in the field of vintage mystery studies, academics are not always the experts.  I think the profession could use a healthy dose of connoisseurship.  And that's where the internet really scores.  

The internet gives experts who aren't necessarily within the academic profession a forum.  My Amazon critic has a blog, but no one reads it.  (It's hard to read, both in terms of its opaque content and its execrable format.)  My blog is moving on its way to three million views.  Heck, even my critic professes to like my blog.  (I don't know how he will feel about the last few posts.)

To be sure, I wish my books sold like my blog is viewed.  That's why my next book, a critical biography, I want to publish with a commercial press.  It's the first book I have written with that goal in mind.  Masters was published with a scholarly press, which unfortunately is rather limiting, given that most such presses aim only to sell to libraries--Remember them?--and price accordingly.  The blog is all well and good (very good, really), but I wouldn't mind making some real money from my books, I'll admit.  Mercenary of me, I know.  But that's what happens when you don't stay in the ivory tower and must venture down mean streets.  

7 comments:

  1. Well Curt I, for one are glad you published Masters of Humdrum, because I read it before I discovered your blog. It got me thinking about Crofts, Burton/Rhode in a new way again, and reinforced the feeling that Golden Age crime was largely ignored because it was considered inferior...except of course for the 'Crime Queens'. Anyway you lit the flame for me that seemed to erupt out of nowhere with British Library reprints. Hope you get to make some money out of it in the future !!. Paul Davis

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    1. It's been an interesting decade. A number of us used to talk a lot bout all this in internet groups, including Martin Edwards, who of course is so much more high profile. And working with the BL and HarperCollins he has been so much better placed than I have been. I know of course that my work, including Masters, shows up a lot in his work (I can point you line by line), but of course Martin had long wanted to do a book on the Detection Club and he had a better grasp of the Golden Age than most mystery writers, I'll admit, though if you look back he was pretty dismissive early on to Crofts and Street, etc. There's still influence from Symons on Edwards. I think he has changed his tune on that some since Masters, etc. And of course the Crofts reprints have been very successful, the Rhodes not as much I fear.

      But there has been some frustration. The fact that the BL reissued Farjeon's Mystery in White and gave me no credit for that inspiration really rankles. How do they excuse that to themselves? Not only not to ask me to write the introductions but not to even mention my blog review, which started it all just seems rotten, honestly. BL to this day has never asked me to do anything for them, even when my blog inspired the reprint. And HarperCollins asked me to do one intro, on American Carolyn Wells, on a book I suspect they selected for the title rather than the actual quality.

      So there's a been a lot of disappointment. I feel like the old boy's British club has kind of shut me out of things over there, which is pretty ludicrous considering all the work I have done on British mystery, and still do. See the Mary Fitts, for example. I take a back seat to no one on that subject. And whatever happens with me, I'm proud of getting all these authors back in print with small presses, with informative introductions. The Big British Boys have left me to do that at least. and I've started to do some work, on Americans, for Mysterious Press.

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  2. Actually, facts seem to bounce right off some people these days (except for the imaginary "alternate facts"). I agree with what you say, but I've come to doubt the power of real evidence to change closed minds.

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    1. Well, that's true but facts remain in the record. I think it irks my reviewer to have them out there. People like that don't like it when we think for ourselves and question their (amazingly under researched) work.

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  3. A very interesting post, Curt, and your tireless work in the field is of course very much appreciated by your fellow bloggers, readers and fans. I know that doesn't make up for the irritations you mention (or provide you with money!) but at least you are not completely working in the dark...

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    1. It's nice to be part of a community and I know the work is appreciated by a lot of readers. And I still keep at it.

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  4. Your work is appreciated, but apparently not by anyone willing to give either credit or money. It's a world full of belief-driven idiots for the most part. Where you've gone wrong is in your focus on facts. Much better to 'believe' things. That way you avoid most of the hard work. See also: Politicians

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