ritzner's blog

Noir: only for dummies

2005-12-01T11:23:00.001-08:00

What do Jim Thompson, James M. Cain, James Ellroy, Dennis Lehane and Domenic Stansberry have in common, apart from being overrated bad writers? You got it, they all wrote or write noir fiction. Though heralded as the cream of the cream by stupid people for whom crime fiction is at its best only when it's all about bleakness and corrupt people and has no plot in sight, Noir is actually the lowest of all crime/mystery sub-genres. It panders to the peeping-tom taste of readers and critics that want to be said again and again that the world is rotten and so is human nature. Hence the repetitive, regurgitative nature of those tales of losers, femmes fatales, psychotics, mobsters and all the ilk. That crap had its place in lowbrow paperbacks where it was born but thanks to some "enlightened" critics it's now regarded as a major form worthy of praise and awards (Robert "Stupido" Polito and Domenic "Nitwit" Stansberry were given Edgars over the last decade)
Noir happily remains unpopular with the general reading public. Another proof that the layman is often more intelligent than the so-called expert crowd.

Debunking Ian Rankin

2005-12-01T11:23:00.000-08:00

Another proof of contemporary bad taste in mystery fiction and literature as a whole: Ian Rankin tops The Scotman's List of most important Scottish people after gaining other quite undeserved honours such as Gold and Diamond Daggers or the Edgar Allan Poe award last year for the utterly mediocre Ressurection Men.
In a perfect world, Mr. Rankin would secure a mention only in Bill Pronzini's Gun in Cheek. But it is not a perfect world - alas. It is a world where hacks like Rankin or Block or Lehane or Bruen are given recognition while genuinely talented authors are condemned to obscurity, all that in the name of psychology and social relevance.
Mr. Rankin admittedly has a lot of both - or, to be more accurate, of the modern idea of those. His characterization, in the "best" post-Rendellian tradition, relies heavily on making each character a walking dreck filled with personal and familial issues. His sociological approach goes no further than dwelling into bleakness and sordidness mistaken for "realism". And of course naive readers and philistine critics gulp into that even though Mr. Rankin couldn't plot his way out of a phonebooth and has a writing style as turgid as flaccid as an octogenarian's chest.
It's damn time to stop it and that good taste comes back in mystery fiction. That's why I revive my blog after a long silence. Truth has to be known.

Debunking Patricia Highsmith

2004-11-19T08:41:00.000-08:00

Illness kept me inactive for a while, so that I had more time to read than I needed. Having heard many good things about that author and while knowing she was certainly not my cup of tea, I decided to give Patricia Highsmith a try and bought some of her most important works, including Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley. I enjoyed both as films, but it surely didn't prove anything, as directors like Hitchcock, Clement or Minghella can do something marvelous out of the crappiest book.
It didn't take me a long time to realize my fears were justified and Highsmith was just not for me. Her writing is hopelessly dark, nasty, humorless but in a wicked way and above all quite tedious. Nothing happens but unpleasant characters walking through inconsistent, nearly non-existent plots. I can see why critics like Julian Symons or authors like Ruth Rendell admire her so much, but I have really nothing good to say about that writer as she once more evidences current mistake of mainstream fiction with criminal interest for real good crime fiction.

Get that 'literature' out of my mystery!

2004-07-18T10:31:00.000-07:00

Though a relative newcomer on the web, I already have a bunch of enemies, people offended by my outspoken, non-compromising attitude threatening their intellectual comfort. As a result, I was more or less gently fired from several groups and forums I belonged to, while I had pretty hard times on the ones where I managed to stay despite continuous insults and menaces. Despise is all that those philistines deserve, and that's why I won't waste my time giving their names - as the usual formula says, they will recognize themselves.

One of the reasons why I made and still make them so upset is my refusal of any "literary" stuff in mystery fiction. Unlike the "in" crowd, I think that in-depth characterization is useless, elaborate writing is out of place and social relevance must be confined to papers and documentaries. In other words, the least literary mysteries are, the better to me.

I can some of my readers baffled at such a denial of what they have been learned and told to be good fiction, but I rest my case. All the elements above may work well in mainstream fiction or so-called "literature" but they have no place in mystery fiction, or at least they are not required. What a mystery first needs is a plot, a strong one. Then it takes a detective to unravel it. The rest is merely optional, and must stay peripheral to the main thing. Alas, the greater majority of contemporary mysteries work in a quite reverse way. Authors, it must be said, have higher ambitions than merely devising a plot and telling a story, they want to comment about human nature, society, politics, metaphysics and the holy shit. Murder, detection, deduction, when still there by some chance, are nothing but gimmicks. Didn't critics' pet Dennis Lehane point it quite well by telling he was writing "urban novels", not "plain whodunits"? Don't worry, Den: you're not writing plain whodunits, just plain urban novelistic rubbish for wannabe-highbrow readers. Stuck with them and leave mystery alone.

The mystery to me has nothing to do with "literature". It is something else, something better. Hence there is no need to pollute it with mainstream standards to please the establishment and getting good ink from the fools at the New York Times, New York Review of Books or The Atlantic Monthly. And authors not recognizing the genre's majesty, only desirous of using it as a pretext for their own personal concerns should be thrown away to the 'literary' crowd they are so desperate to reach.

The Hack who became a King

2004-07-08T09:10:00.001-07:00

Literary history is filled with modestly talented artisans getting fame and fortune while authentic geniuses are starving in total anonymity. It takes time for justice to be done, and both the usurper and the usurped are usually dead when their respective merits are finally assessed on their actual value.
Lawrence Block is one of those hacks who, by a mix of chance and lack of solid competition, become kings of the day. His prolific output is always well-crafted, often interesting and never boring. It only lacks something: genius. His Matt Scudder series are a competent reworking of a long-exhausted genre, failing to transcend the P.I. novel the way one Ross MacDonald did. The Bernie Rhodenbarr saga, on the other hand, is quite pleasing, but nowhere as funny as the author intends it to be. Then there is his short fiction, that got him the greater part of his impressive award-list. Once again, we have to admit the artisan's skill at turning up solid, interesting (if not enthralling) stories, but greatness is nowhere in sight. Block looks great only because he is surrounded by little people; he turns pale when facing a giant. Fortunately for him, giants are not fashionable nowadays, and little people are ruling mystery world. His position is then secure. But not his immortality.

Hello

2004-07-08T09:10:00.000-07:00

My name is Ritzner Von Jung. Of course it isn't my real name. I took this pseudonym from a tale by Edgar Allan Poe, my ultimate literary idol. This, and the fact that I have been reading mysteries since I was ten, will be the only things you'll ever know about me, as the rest is irrelevant. Who cares about my age, my job, my family status? The topic here is mysteries, so let us talk about mysteries.
I am, as this blog's introduction hints, a rather opinionated man with firmly and strictly delineated ideas about what a good mystery is and is not. These ideas, as this blog's intro suggests, are not the ones in court in contemporary fandom and mystery establishment. I don't care about psychology, social relevance and all the superfetatory stuff modern crime writers fill their books with in order to please the literati crowd. I positively hate noir, police procedurals, thrillers and - with some exceptions - hard-boiled. Finally, human-too-human detectives with their petty lives make me sick. A mystery to me is not about everyday people, society, politics, human nature and all that stupid ilk. A mystery is about plot, puzzle and a detective solving the case through logical reasoning. That's why I keep loyal to the aptly named Golden Age of Detective Fiction that produced geniuses such as John Dickson Carr, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Ellery Queen, Dorothy L. Sayers and several others. Reactionary? Old-fashioned? You bet!
So don't expect me to ride with the kings of the day and telling you how great are Elmore Leonard, James Lee Burke, Minette Walters or S.J. Rozan. Expect me rather to trash them and friends everytime and as much as I can. When the balance is not set well, it's up to someone to redress it. Well, I'll be that someone.
I think you now have a more or less fair idea of what this blog and its author are and plan to do. So enough with introductions and place for action.