This week I’m riffing off Tom Kie’s post from yesterday. I’ll have to make this short and sweet because I’m already a day behind some important things because my grandson dropped by yesterday and we had to “play trains” together.
My simple explanation is that social commentary is an almost unavoidable part of crime fiction. We’re talking about people in stressful situations with violence as the driving factor in the plot, so social commentary just happens as the storyline unfolds.
The issue for me as a reader is when the social commentary is layered onto the plot. Simple test: Can that part of the storyline be dropped without creating any insurmountable plot issues? If you can answer yes, then it’s egregious. Basically, it’s the author pontificating — likely rightly so — about something that they feel strongly about.
However, adding social commentary to a plot is easy if it’s made a driver of the plot. Say a character is a exceptionally vocal proponent of stopping climate change and is killed, likely because of that stance. An author is then free to talk about this. If the character is just left to rant about the dangers of climate change but this really doesn’t have anything to do with the central tenet of the plot, then it’s quite likely a vehicle for the author to pontificate.
And I’ve seen many a promising novel go down this path. I generally don’t finish them.
So there’s my 2¢ on this subject. Please weigh in if you will. Comments on Type M are always welcome, in favour or not in favour!
3 comments:
My Natalie McMasters Mysteries often feature social commentary. However, it's always character driven. It's a pet peeve of mine that readers often accuse me of holding the same view as one of my characters, simply because the character expresses a viewpoint in the story. It's especially amusing when characters in the story hold opposing viewpoints and one reader labels me a liberal ahole while another calls me a right-wing nutjob.
It is funny that readers think the characters are surrogates for the author's views. In the case you cited you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. It's funny, but it's also kind of sad.
Thanks for commenting, Tom!
The first crime fiction I read, other than Christie, was by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. They managed to use their Martin Beck novels to reflect social conditions without ever getting preachy. So I've always thought social commentary, shown through the setting and the social class of the characters, was the role of crime fiction. I was surprised to find out that their stance was actually rare in the world of mystery writing.
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