Saturday, January 31, 2015

Yikes, nothing since October???

I've been ruminating a bit about some feedback from a WFoD reviewer. I do that a lot, ruminate over the feedback - it's great knowing someone actually read my stuff, and even better that they had something to say about it (nevermind that some of them write as well, and expect me to read & respond to their stuff, so it's a little logrolling I guess).

So anyway the feedback of note mentioned that Arthur Mackay (it's pronounced "mackEYE" BTW - the narrator/protagonist of "Bogue and Handelman") was reminiscent of Charlie Samuels (not my link, don't know where it came from) of Betty in the Library (aka Betty Gets the Vapors). Well, certainly. And in some respects that's not the least bit surprising, since they both share a few characteristics with their creator. They're both bookish, a bit past middle age, somewhat solitary (here I plead not 100% coincidence since I'm not solitary, though I am pretty asocial). The question that piqued my rumination though was "why do people - Betty and Emory Bogue - seek these people in particular out for help?"

Well I'll eschew the obvious answer (because otherwise this would be a different story about someone else). But I'm really having trouble not simply answering "why not?"

In both cases the person seeking help is even MORE reclusive and solitary and unconnected (and unworldly) than the prot/narr. In both cases the prot/narr is someone connected to the outer world to a greater extent than the persons seeking their help/guidance. Charlie Samuels is a writer of some sort - he mentions an article for some periodical, and a "story" for another. Arthur Mackay is a "professorish" sort - so bookish, but participating in the world. They know stuff, they know what's going on, they know - it's logical for Bogue and Betty to conclude - something about the way the world works. And most importantly, they're THERE - they're present and relatively familiar to the distressed ones. In short, they're older and (ostensibly) wiser.

So in fact I really don't think it's all that unreasonable that Bogue and Betty would seek out Samuels and Mackay when their worlds go weird. Who else?

Also, to some extent they (Charlie and Arthur) are a combination of the unwilling quester and the "wizard" of Campbell's Hero Quest rubric. I like to turn it slightly on its head in that unlike the epic and Romantic traditions, the protagonist isn't a hotshot warrior or prince but more of an ordinary schlumpf cast into the adventure by fate or destiny or a case of Hitchcockian mistaken identity.

But the REAL driver for this blurt is a little deeper than that. Underlying the queries about "why would these people seek help from those people?" is an implied comment that "it isn't rational" for them to do so, or it's not "reasonable" or "realistic."

I'll certainly plead guilty to the "realistic" comment; maybe not so much on the "rational" and "reasonable" but in fact that's really beside the point. Which is that these are not "real" people. they don't live in the "real" world, i.e. the one I live in. They're fictional inhabitants of a place that LOOKS like, and sounds like and smells like, and feels like the world I live in, but it isn't the same world at all. I live in a world of fact; they live in a world unconstrained by fact. I flatter myself that they live in a world that's parallel to that of Jeeves and Wooster, as well as Philip Marlowe and Sherlock Holmes and maybe Alice and Mike Hammer and Conradin and Nayland Smith and even Charlie Chan. Spend a little time with these people and you either lose the requirement that people act rationally, in "logical" way, or you end up not enjoying their adventures very much.

It's a fantasy world. Unlike the worlds of JRRT and the hosts of his heirs, it looks a lot more like ours than Middle Earth and all those places that line the shelves of B&N. But it's NOT ours. People are placed in unexpected circumstances, and do unexpected things, and incredible things happen. It's the incredible things that make the story a story and cause the entertainment (one hopes).

There never really was a London exactly like that inhabited by Holmes, nor by Jeeves & Wooster. It's a stage set; it contains stock backgrounds (people as well as real estate) against which "hilarity" or "dark doings" can ensue. There never was a valet like Jeeves, really, though there may well have been any number of upper-class twits like Bertie Wooster and his clubmates at the Drones.

Now it's true that I agree that the characters - once established - need to be consistent to themselves (keeping in mind that people aren't necessarily consistent) and to the rules by which they're created and which govern their worlds. But when I hear the comment that "he wouldn't DO that!" I have to respond "but he DID!" As long as an action isn't completely out of well-established character "wouldn't do that" isn't really a valid comment. True it wouldn't do to have Barkis parade down Market Street in drag, but that also might be as much a function of "1948" as it is of Barkis.

We surprise people all the time with our choices and behaviors (at least I have), both positively and negatively. People ("real" and fictional) are capable of breaking out of other peoples' expectations.

Furthermore (which might undermine the above, I dunno) it's the unworldly character of the events that make for entertainment. If we want to watch upper-middle-class suburban folks behaving as upper-middle-class suburban folks behaved in the 70s we only need to read Updike or Roth or Ford. (I hope Yates is over the line, but my son disagrees). Or Dubus (either one). I think I'm after something else though - closer to Wodehouse in content & sentiment, though with a helping of Hammett and Serling stylistically.

The people do what they do "for your consideration."