The Nostalgia of Texas Gothic and Horror

Last Monday, I had the pleasure of moderating the Q&A and book signing of I Was A Teenage Slasher with one of my favorite authors, Stephen Graham Jones. It's been years since I've attended such a book event in a Barnes & Noble and it felt pretty damn good. Considering it was a week-work afternoon during rush hour, we had a great SRO crowd.

Slasher is a very American story, tapping on cultural touchstones that may not resonate with someone who was not raised in this country. Though Jones and I grew up hundreds of miles and a decade apart, we were each familiar with the identical childhood and adolescent rituals that provided a backdrop to this tale. The Saturday morning marathon watching cartoons. Hanging out at the local convenience store. High school culture with the cool kids and everyone else. The Band. Majorettes. The markers of Texas Gothic--water towers forlorn as abandoned cathedrals, long stretches of desolate highway through the dusty prairie. Barbed-wire fences and cattle guards. Rust. Dirt. Youthful angst and a yearning for the bigger world on the other side of the horizon. A promise to get away and never look back. Then drawn back to immerse yourself in the selected memories of your past.

But Slashers is hardly an ode to nostalgia with its graphic depictions of torture and humiliating slayings. Jones used a couple of tropes to power the momentum and stoke the horror. First is that of an unreliable narrator to string you along from one ghastly murder to another, making you distrust your ability to understand the narrative. Second, his protagonist (and villain) and the side-kick accomplice note how the slayings conformed to the plot of a teenage horror flick and so predicted who gets offed next. Jones' prose is so enveloping and descriptive that it's a wonder you can flip through the pages and not get any blood spatter. His writing style is to lead the reader into a darkened room, then "I blow out the candle and let their hand go."

We also saw another side to Jones, revealed by his desire to write a rom-com and perhaps pen the script for a Hallmark Christmas Special (playing it straight, no slashers invited). When asked which character he'd like to be cast as in Pulp Fiction, it was Mia Wallace, played by Uma Thurman.

Love a Good MacGuffin!!!

by Thomas Kies

  

In his last blog, Mario Acevedo mentioned a story device called a MacGuffin.

What exactly is a MacGuffin? The term originated with Alfred Hitchcock who said, "In crook stories it is almost always the necklace and in spy stories it is most always the papers".

If you read books, watch movies, or play video games, you most certainly have encountered a MacGuffin. It’s a plot device that motivates the characters and is the engine that drives the story forward.  But in reality, the MacGuffin has little or no real value or meaning.

Some famous examples of MacGuffins are:

● The briefcase in Pulp Fiction (what WAS in there, anyway?)

● The letters of transit in Casablanca

● The Death Star plans in Star Wars

● The Holy Grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade—or the Ark of the Covenant, or the stones in the Temple of Doom, or the Crystal Skull (awful movie).  Or…whatever else is in the new flick. 

● The Maltese Falcon in The Maltese Falcon (Loved the book, loved the movie!!)

MacGuffins can be objects, people, places, or concepts. They can be tangible or intangible, concrete or abstract, realistic or something from a fever-dream. They can be sought after by the good guys, the bad guys, or, even better, both. They can be revealed, hidden, lost, found, stolen, destroyed, or forgotten.

MacGuffins are great story props and often where the real tale begins.

The MacGuffin is there to create conflict and tension.  And all stories are moved by conflict and tension.

It helps drive the story forward. It gives the characters a reason to pursue their goals, face obstacles, and overcome challenges. It also provides a source of mystery and intrigue for the audience, who may wonder what the MacGuffin is, why it is important, and what will happen to it.

However, a MacGuffin is not the same as a theme or a message. A MacGuffin does not have to be symbolic or meaningful in itself. It does not have to reflect the deeper issues or values of the story.  As a matter of fact, maybe it shouldn’t. 

 It does not have to be explained or resolved by the end of the story. In fact, sometimes the best MacGuffins are the ones that remain ambiguous or irrelevant. Once again, think of Pulp Fiction and whatever was in that briefcase.  Everyone wanted it, but we never find out what it was.

A good MacGuffin is one that enhances the story without dominating it. It is one that sparks curiosity without demanding attention. It is one that drives action without dictating outcome. It is one that matters to the characters but not to the audience.

Humphrey Bogart, playing Sam Spade, describes the Maltese Falcon as the “thing that dreams are made of.”  The Maltese Falcon, of course, turns out to be a fake.  The ultimate MacGuffin. 

Sometimes less is more

John Corrigan's post a few days ago about short novels resonated with me.

My crime reading tastes were honed by Ed McBain and his 87th Precinct novels.

(At this point, there will be people here in the UK rolling their eyes and murmuring here he goes again. For 'tis true, I have waxed lyrical about McBain many a time and oft. But bear with me).

Anyway, when they began they were short. I mean, unfeasibly short by today's standards. The first, COP HATER, came in at around 170 pages. The next two - THE MUGGER and THE PUSHER - at even less. 

Immortal characters were created. Scenarios etched. A city built from scratch. Believable dialogue echoed from page to ear. They didn't need to be any longer than they were.

All three were published in the same year - 1956 - and were viewed as pulp. Mere ingredients to keep the paperback pot boiling.

Of course, as the years passed and the stature of the series grew so did the pagination. 

But think about it. Three fully realised tales in the reading space that many of today's novels take to tell one.

Agatha Christie's seldom breached the 200 page mark. Chandler's THE BIG SLEEP was even less. FAREWELL MY LOVELY crept closer to the double century. The edition of THE LONG GOODBYE I have is barely 250 pages. 

And Hammett's THE MALTESE FALCON? A stonking great 189 pages. THE DAIN CURSE just under 200 pages.

These are classics, folks. These are the books that have lived on through the decades. 

Of course, I'm using my copies as reference. Different editions may be longer, even shorter. It's all down to the font used, type size, even the size of pages. I've seen a version of THE LONG GOODBYE listed at 450 pages, thus living up to its title. You must be able to see that type from the moon.

But, I hear you say, we have more depth now and that may well be true. I'm not here to cast aspersions on modern day books.

As the McBain books progressed,  crime fiction began taking more than a few pages from the blockbuster genre which in the 1950s, 60s and 70s tended to run to the doorstop size. Harold Robbins' THE CARPETBAGGERS was around 650 pages, as was Irwin Shaw's RICH MAN, POOR MAN. James Jones' FROM HERE TO ETERNITY even longer. I lost my copy years ago but if memory serves it was a bugle note below 1,000 pages.

And let's not even go the James Clavell route. Yes, NOBLE HOUSE, I'm looking at you. It's a book I felt needed a series of gym workouts before I could even consider picking it up.

But these were massive sagas. Without discussing their literary merits, which to be frank I'm not interested in (I just want to be entertained when reading these books), they were busy books with lots of characters, lots going on and when I read them I wasn't aware of any padding. Perhaps there was. Perhaps I've become more critical in my old age.

So what's my point? 

Well, I think a book - any book - should be as long as it needs to be. It is true that - in my opinion - there are reads today which go on a bit longer than they need to. That also goes for movies and TV series, which can be also be guilty of having plot lines that deserve a certain running time but end up with considerably more. 

McBain, Christie et al felt no need to extend their books for, in truth, back then they didn't need to. Styles, tastes, needs change however and much of the reading public want - no, demand - heftier reads. In crime fiction's case, more bang for their buck. At least in physical copies. Direct to digital can be different.

I drew just as much enjoyment from my 150 page McBains as I do from today's 400-500 modern crime thrillers. Sometimes more. I didn't feel cheated. I didn't take to social media to complain (not that I could back then. It was a simpler, even happier time).

And, in the spirit of the subject, there I will leave it. 

We Are What We Read

I’m nearly at the end of teaching my Creative Writing class and it’s been as much of a learning experience for me as it has for them.   We started out as eight strangers and by the end, we know a lot about each other.

In each class, I assign a writing prompt such as create a character and put that character in an action scene. This week’s writing prompt is to write a scene of romance primarily using dialogue. Next week’s assignment, and our final one, will be to write the first few pages of your book and the last few pages of your book.

All of the members of this class are good writers.  Some are outstanding.

One of the classmates uses the writing prompts to add to his folksy short story about a boy losing his bike.  One of the writers is extraordinary at humor.  One has a remarkable ability to describe scenes.  One is a thriller addict and it comes out in his writing.

Three of the students are millennials and I hesitate to pigeonhole any demographic, but I’ve noticed that when they read their work aloud, they do it from their phones using Google-Docs. And all three of them write about medieval fantasy worlds of assassins, magic, and fierce warriors.

When asked about the subject matter, I discovered that Dungeons & Dragons has made an impressive comeback.  I’d thought that the game had died out in the eighties.  I was wrong.

I was impressed when one of the other students asked them if they’d read The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit and they replied that they had.

It wasn’t the first time I’d gotten an inkling that younger folks interested in writing enjoyed that genre.  I spoke to a middle school class about writing and asked them what kind of interests they had.  It was the medieval fantasy genre but also, and not surprising, science fiction and superheroes.

I thought back to what genres interested me when I was much younger.  Back in the seventies, pulp science fiction and horror magazines filled with strange and wonderful short stories held my fascination.  I began writing my own and submitting them.

Not one of them sold.

However, I did get a really positive personal letter from Ben Bova, the publisher of Omni.

I kept writing short stories and finally got one published in a glossy men’s magazine called Cavalier. A tawdry publication, but the one that first published Stephen King’s short stories.

Mine was called Fast Dancing Detroit Style and it was about a killer who picks up a hitchhiker in the Nevada desert who turns out to be a ghost.

It wasn’t much later that I picked up my first Travis McGee mystery.  I was hooked.  I discovered that I love mysteries.  But that's not what I started writing, not yet.

As a fledgling writer I took a few detours, trying my hand at a historical novel (awful), a horror novel (even worse), and a flat out thriller (my own wife wouldn’t read it).

No, I was exclusively reading mysteries:  Sue Grafton, Raymond Chandler, Walter Mosely, Ed McBain, Lawrence Block, and Mickey Spillane, as well as many, many others.  Mysteries are my niche.  I enjoy reading them and I enjoy writing them.

The point of this rambling blog?  We are what we read.  Or perhaps what movies we watch and games we play.

Stay safe.  Stay healthy.

www.thomaskiesauthor.com