A Small Boast

If I may be permitted a brief mention, last week I published a new ebook, Relatively Dead, wherein my heroine suddenly starts seeing people who aren't there.  I think Edgar Allen Poe would be proud.  

You can find it at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Listening to the Irish

by Sheila Connolly

Long before my County Cork series saw the light of day, I started taking Irish language classes at a local Irish cultural center.  The classes were offered by an organization called Cumann na Gaeilge, which translates to Friends of the Irish.  I spent five years of Thursday nights trekking to the center, and emerged with a rather rudimentary knowledge of contemporary Irish, plus a few memorized poems and songs.  No fault of the instructors—it's a notoriously difficult language to learn.  In truth, mostly I went to listen, since both my primary instructor and more than half the people in the class were Irish-born (which does not necessarily mean that they learned the language in Ireland in their early years), and I wanted to absorb the speech patterns and inflection.

Due to internal conflicts, Cumann na Gaeilge split apart in the past year, and my former instructor founded a new group, Ar dTeanga Dhuchais, which means Our Native Language, to offer language classes.  Somehow I found myself agreeing to be treasurer of the new group, mainly to keep some contact with the language.  Recently we held a meeting at an Irish pub in Boston.

I was the only American-born person at the table of five.  I knew two of the people there, and the other two were strangers to me.  I mostly listened, and after a while I wished I'd had a recorder with me, because what I saw unfolding was exactly what I've tried to include in my irish-based series.

First a stranger (Irish) walked up and started a conversation with Seamus, one of the men at the table, asking if they'd met before.  They hadn't, but it turned out that Seamus's brother had worked in the same union as the newcomer (all but one of the men are now retired from one or another of the building trades).  Then there ensued a long conversation amongst them men about what other contacts they shared, covering a few decades.  There was a strange aside when the newcomer was somehow reluctant to reveal his surname, at least until everyone (or at least the men) had established his bona fides.  (It turned out to be Keneally.)  And then this segued into where each had come from and when (but not why) and who and what they knew back in Ireland.

And I'm sitting there still as a mouse, gobsmacked (another good Irish phrase—"gob" means mouth in Irish) by what I'm hearing, because it's exactly what I wanted in my book, and here I am hearing it like it was a script, or something I wish I'd written.  These men are decades removed from "home," and yet they're still talking about where they came from.  Not on a grand level, but about details—about waiting for the tides, and curraghs (a kind of small boat I'd only read about), and harvesting kelp not for food or fertilizer but to dry and use in weaving. About neighbors helping neighbors when the seas were too rough to travel to the mainland from the little islands off the west coast. About families maybe none of them knew, but they knew about from others.

All the elements I've seen in Ireland—as an American outsider—were there:  the attachment to the land, the connection to a network of people, the way of establishing not "if" but "how" they connect with an Irish stranger. All rolling out in front of me, unasked. 

I'll be in Dublin again on Sunday. I can't wait.

Dolce far niente

Elizabeth Zelvin

“It is sweet to do nothing.” It’s an old Italian expression, first used in 1814, according to Merriam-Webster Online, and it describes a state of being that is almost impossible to achieve in the 21st century. The new technology has eliminated all the little pockets of time we used to spend with our internal Pause button on, all the periods of waiting that we could devote to daydreaming or in “carefree idleness,” as dolce far niente is frequently defined.

Remember when you had to get somewhere before you could talk to anyone? The ubiquitous cell phone has eliminated that period of grace. Being alone with our thoughts has gone out of style. If I choose not to conduct my personal life or business on the street or the bus, you’ll gladly make me privy to yours.

If you’re a writer or an editor, remember “turn-around time”? At every stage, manuscripts and then various kinds of proofs were marked by hand and sent by mail, while you got a breather waiting for them to arrive, and the publisher didn’t expect them back for at least a week or two. Today, publishers and even agents will send work that needs my attention by email on a Friday afternoon and want it back immediately for posting to the Web on Monday. And woe betide me if I have plans for the weekend!

How much time do you have to read these days? Is it less than it used to be? And to what extent can you do it without a guilty feeling that you’re supposed to be doing something more productive? If I pick up a book before halfway through the evening, I may start out assuring myself that reading is a justifiable pleasure, or even better, an aspect of my work. But before I know it, it’s bedtime, and I find myself thinking, “I got nothing done.”

I’m a believer in E.M. Forster’s famous motto, “Only connect.” If I didn’t treasure the human capacity for connection, if I weren’t fascinated by the ever-changing kaleidoscope of human relationships, I wouldn’t be a writer, and I certainly wouldn’t be a shrink. I believe that the communication that goes on in cyberspace broadens the range of how people connect with each other. For me, online connections have allowed me to help clients all over the world and given me the support network I needed to achieve my lifelong dream of being a novelist. To be engaged, online or otherwise, is an essential part of human experience. But to engage online is to do, not to be, and certainly not to do nothing.

I spent a couple of idyllic afternoons in Central Park with a book this spring. The weather was glorious, the magnolias in full bloom, the grass studded with daffodils. All around me, fellow New Yorkers were sitting or lying in the grass, mostly reading or talking quietly, some snoozing, others epitomizing dolce far niente by simply sitting there, taking in the beauty of the day.

How did I manage to give myself permission to come so close to carefree idleness? Well, I’m currently reading entries in a book competition, as authors are asked to do from time to time, so it could be classed as homework, not mere pleasure. And besides, I was obeying my maternal introject (that’s your mother’s voice in your head, long after she’s not around any more). My mother, a high achiever and a “human doing” if I ever met one, used to say, “It’s a gorgeous day—you should be outdoors!”

Villains Behind the Badges

by Sandra Parshall

I read far more books than I will ever write, so it’s not surprising that I have the same preferences and pet peeves as any other reader. I have a lot of pet peeves. Publicly criticizing another writer’s work, though, won’t make me popular and might create an awkward future moment when I come face to face with that author.

So: no names, no book titles.

But I have to tell you how tired I am of seeing law enforcement officers, from FBI agents to small town cops, appearing as villains in crime novels.

After the Boston Marathon bombing, a couple of people I had previously considered sane spouted the strong suspicion that the FBI and local police planted the bombs, killed and maimed all those innocent people (including children), and framed two young brothers whose backgrounds (Muslim immigrants) would make them plausible fall guys. Oh, and the older brother was unarmed when the two were surrounded, and he was murdered in cold blood by the cops.

The “proof” behind this theory: everybody knows the FBI and most police departments are corrupt, that they are working every angle to subjugate the population and control every aspect of our lives. (Why would they...? Never mind. That’s another discussion.)

One person told me that if I would stop being a blind sheep and do some research on the internet, I would discover ample evidence of this conspiracy. The internet is where we should all look for the truth. Oh wow. After I stopped laughing, I couldn’t come up with an answer to that.

I asked myself: Where do people get such ideas?

A person’s own inner sense of helplessness and hatred of all authority is a big part of his or her willingness to jump immediately to the wildest, most negative conclusion. But I’ve begun to wonder whether crime fiction writers are feeding readers’ suspicions and delusions.

Even in cozies, the police are often portrayed as bumblers who couldn’t detect their way out of a pastry box and have to rely on women with no law enforcement training and loads of free time to solve all the murders.

In darker mysteries and thrillers, it gets worse.

FBI agents or cops ostensibly pursuing serial killers may turn out to be the very killers they’re after.

Brutal, psychotic Sheriffs in rural areas, particularly in the south, have appeared in fiction so often that they’ve become a cliche.

Then we have entire police departments that are in on the drug dealing and  prostitution or whatever and do not hesitate to murder anyone who gets in their way.

Another type I’m awfully tired of is the rebel cop, sometimes young and relatively inexperienced, who happens to be the only competent investigator on the entire force. She or he breaks all the rules, goes off alone (without backup or notice to superiors) into potentially deadly situations, and may engage in a bit of illegal activity – but in this case it’s heroic because it’s the only way to work around the system-wide incompetence and corruption. Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch is the poster child for rebel cop syndrome. In his younger days, Bosch was given to throwing office furniture through windows at police headquarters and similar acts of hotheaded defiance. He did things that would have landed any real cop on the curb in an instant, and possibly in jail, but like all rebel cops he suffered few consequences. Now he’s too old to be believable as a rebel, but plenty of younger characters are following his lead.

Do corrupt cops exist in real life? Of course. We’ve read and heard about them following their arrests.

Are some detectives incompetent? Without a doubt.

Are some FBI agents psychotic? I don’t know of any offhand, but I wouldn’t say it’s out of the question, given the prevalence of mental illness in the general population.

Have any real FBI agents or cops ever been exposed as raving lunatic serial killers who managed to function professionally at such a high level that they had everybody fooled? If so, I can’t point to a case. Like anyone else, an FBI agent or police officer is far more likely to kill someone close – a lover, a spouse or other family member.

I’m not saying corrupt and crazy cops don’t exist in real life. I’m saying too many of them show up in crime fiction. Such characters probably reinforce the fear and distrust of police that many ordinary citizens feel. Maybe they feed the delusional fantasies some people harbor. Perhaps all forms of fiction – books, TV, movies – have helped to bring some people to the point where it seems rational that the tragedy in Boston was engineered by law enforcement and the Tsarnaev brothers were simply two innocent pawns.

All that aside, these characters have committed the cardinal sin of fiction: they have become ordinary and easy to spot. Predictable. And in crime fiction, “predictable” always means boring.

Victoria Day

Sharon Wildwind

Victoria Day (yesterday for those of you who don’t live in Canada) is my absolutely favorite Canadian holiday.

Yes, the Auld Queen was an interesting person, who lived in interesting times. Since I’ve suffered through more than my share of Victorian literature—I think I’ve explained before that I got an accidental minor in it the last time I was in university—so I know a great deal about the interesting times between 1837 and 1901. As a Steampunker, I know something of the life and times that never happened, but wouldn’t it be fun if it did.

All that aside, Victoria is not the reason I love Victoria Day. This is.

Those of you about to harvest your first tomatoes are asking so what? Green grass? leaves on the trees? What am I supposed to see here?

The answer is green grass and leaves on trees. Those leaves weren’t there seven days ago. Last Monday they were little buds, figments of our collective imagination. Let me try to explain spring in Calgary. Last snowfall April 13th. First buds noticeable on trees around May 10th. Yesterday, planted balcony garden in 13 degree Celsius weather (55 degrees Fahrenheit) while wearing trousers and two shirts to keep from freezing. Summer temperatures are expected by next week.

In short, we don’t have spring. We go from winter to summer in the blink of an eye. Victoria Day isn’t so much about the Widow of Windsor as it is about going outside without a coat, winter boots, toques (that’s a cap), and gloves. That kind of sartorial freedom makes us positively giddy. Finally released from winter, we get up to all sorts of things on Victoria Day.

Today the town was full of people dressed in tweeds and riding bikes. See here for the Calgary Tweed Ride. People having picnics on lawns. Tea drinkers in elegant white dresses. Large amounts of scone consumption.

I celebrated by making Shrinky-Dink labels for my planters. If you’ve never played with Shrinky-Dink, you’ve missed one of art’s great delights. I lunched on basil chicken salad, new potatoes, fresh strawberries, and lemon cake. I drank tea on my balcony, sitting next to my newly-planted garden. And I wore my Steampunk T-shirt and jewelry to my critique group.

I am so ready for summer.

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Quote for the week:

In the spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.

~Mark Twain (1835 – 1910), American author and humorist who

1) neatly spanned the Victorian era and

2) never lived in Calgary in the spring when he was observing the weather. No doubt his count would have been higher if he had.

May is Mystery Month

May is a great time to have a party--or many of them--in honor of your favorite mystery writers.  Yes, May is full of mystery writer birthdays!!  Here are some famous writers to celebrate, as well as a reminder of their famous characters.

May 2: CHARLOTTE ARMSTRONG. 1957 Edgar Award Winner for A Dram of Poison.

May 6: JEFFREY DEAVER. He created Lincoln Rhyme, a quadriplegic detective, who is perhaps his most famous character.

May 12: LESLIE CHARTERIS.  Wrote mysteries about Simon Templar, also known as "The Saint."

May 13: DAPHNE DUMAURIER.  She is famous for her gothic and atmospheric suspense novels, including Rebecca, The House on the Strand, and Jamaica Inn.

Daphne du Maurier

www.npg.org.uk

May 20: MARGERY ALLINGHAM.  She created the popular character Campion, the "gentleman sleuth."

May 22: ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE. A Scottish physician and the legendary creator of Sherlock Holmes!

May 23: GRAHAM MONTAGUE JEFFRIES: Blackshirt is a "gentleman criminal" in a series created by Graham Montague Jeffries (aka Bruce Graeme), and later by his son, Roderic Jeffries.

May 24: MARY WILLIS WALKER: Won the 1993 Edgar Award for her novel Red Scream.

May 25: ROBERT LUDLUM: This prolific American thriller author wrote 27 books, including The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum.

May 27: DASHIELL HAMMETT and TONY HILLERMAN: Hammett was the creator of Sam Spade and Nick and Nora Charles; he wrote The Maltese Falcon.  Hillerman was famous for his Navajo Tribal police mystery series, with protagonists Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee.

May 28: IAN FLEMING. Famous for his series of spy novels featuring James Bond (007), he was also an author, a journalist, and a naval intelligence officer.

May 29: G.K. CHESTERTON: Famous for the Father Brown mysteries, Chesterton was also a writer of "philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction" (Wikipedia).

Pick an author or two and rediscover them in honor of their birthdays!!

The Truth Behind Book Signings

 by L. C. Hayden

Leave a comment this weekend and you’ll have a chance to win a free copy of When the Past Haunts You.

Ahhh, the infamous book signing filled with people, laughter, and glamour. This is the moment the authors shine—or do we? Let’s examine the facts.

First, I’ve always said that authors must dress up for the event. Call me old school if you want, but we’re representing the bookstore and all authors, right?  In my everyday world, I hardly ever wear make up, but I will to a signing. I wear church clothes and spend time grooming my hair.

My efforts have paid off. In Odessa, a man bought three copies of my books because he thought I was very pretty—did I tell you I like this man? Had I shown up with torn jeans and a t-shirt, that wouldn’t have happened.

The next day, I went to Wichita Falls, as a tourist, not an author. Since it was very hot and humid and I was just bumming around anyway, I decided to wear shorts. I didn’t care that my naturally curly hair looked like I plugged my finger into the electrical outlet, and my hair stood up.

As we were driving along, my husband, Rich, suggested we stop at Books-a-Million and sign stock. I was hesitant, but agreed.

The manager was very sweet and said she'd love to have me sign the stock. Then she proceeded to set up a table and announced that famous author--didn't I tell you I like that manager?--L. C. Hayden was in the store signing books. I had shorts on, terrible hair, and no make-up. I felt miserable and ugly. Who would want to buy a book from an author who looked like a scarecrow?

Within one hour, I sold out.

So much for having to look pretty.

Sigh.

Ugly or beautiful, the author needs to be on time. In New Hampshire, I had back-to-back signings. Although I had downloaded maps of the stores I was going to visit, I still asked for directions. I only had an hour to reach the next store and I certainly didn't want to be late. I was told to get on the freeway and at exit one the huge mall where I was to sign would loom before me.

Armed with new knowledge, I drove away and did as told. I took exit one, saw the mall, and noticed that its name did not coincide with the one I had. Being a smart cookie, I took out my cell.

“You’re where?  I haven't even heard of that mall!" the bookseller told me. "Now what directions did they give you?"

I told them about exit one.

“Oh no. You’re going to have to get back on the freeway and take exit two."
Due to construction, in order to get back to the freeway, I had to drive around several blocks before picking up the freeway. By now, I only had ten minutes to get to the signing on time. I hurried as much as I could, but traffic fought me all of the way. I finally reached exit two. Sure enough, I saw the mall—the same mall, opposite side.

Sigh.

At a recent California signing where I was proudly promoting my latest release, When the Past Haunts You, a lady approached me and stared at the promotional poster featuring me and my mystery novel. She studied my glamour shot, then looked at me, and back again at the picture. She turned to me and said, “Darling, that is such a nice picture of you. Too bad you don’t look like that.”

Sigh.

People do say the darnest things at signings. At a Houston signing, I met a very nice lady. She had checked out at least three Hayden backlist novels from the library, read them, and loved them. When she heard I was signing in Houston, she decided she’d attend. About five minutes before the signing ended, she arrived. She breathed heavily through her mouth. Her flushed features told me she had been running. “I just drove two-and-a-half hours to get to your signing,” she said gasping for air. “I’ve simply got to have all of your books.”

Naturally, I felt thrilled and honored. As we talked, my mind raced furiously. I wanted to write something very special on her book. Then, because she planned to purchase each of my titles, I had to think of several different things to say. We had chatted for about five minutes longer when she glanced at her watch, grabbed a copy of each of my books and dashed off.

“Excuse me,” I called her back. “Do you want me to sign those books?”

Her eyes widened and her eyebrows arched. “Heavens no!  I don’t like my books trashed.”

Sigh.

At another signing, this time for my nonfiction inspirational book When Angels Touch You, I walked into the store and saw a poster with a hand-drawn Happy Face, my name, and title of book, plus information on the signing. The store’s manager apologized for the poster. I told her it was cute. She said, “You don’t understand. I had a beautiful poster made. I want to show it to you.”

She took me to the back of the store where she had hidden the beautiful poster because of its one tiny mistake. The designer wrote Where Angels Touch instead of When.

Sigh.

During some of my signings, most of the customers look at everything but me, but exceptions exist. These brave souls approach me and my heart beats with anticipation. I’m about to make a sale. I smile and face Brave Souls. Then they ask me the Number One Question all authors get asked, “Where’s the bathroom?”

And that’s the truth behind book signings.

Sigh.

Leave a comment this weekend and you’ll have a chance to win a free copy of When the Past Haunts You.

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L. C. Hayden is the author of the award winning Harry Bronson mystery series. Her latest mystery When the Past Haunts You is a finalist for Left Coast Crime’s Watson Award. Ill Conceived, the first in a new series, will be released in June. Visit her website at http://www.lchayden.com.

Criminal History

by Sheila Connolly

I spent much of the past few weeks on the road, both at the Malice Domestic conference (where I saw two other Daughters, Sandy and Liz, if all too briefly) and doing research for my current work in progress, the nameless #5 in the Museum Mystery series, which in this particular case is set both in Philadelphia and in one of its suburbs.

In the first book of that series, Fundraising the Dead, part of the plot hinged on the creation of a new history museum in Philadelphia.  I didn't make this up:  it was a concept that was talked about within the Philadelphia museum community (which I was once part of) for quite some time, over a decade ago.  Happily it finally came to fruition, and the new and improved Philadelphia History Museum opened in 2012.  This trip gave me my first opportunity to visit it.

It was a slightly weird experience because the new museum acquired many of the paintings and other objects that once belonged to The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, where I worked for several years, so at every turn I kept meeting old friends and familiar faces. Everything was handsomely presented, and I was glad to see that they had found a new home.

But I also encountered some items on display that were new to me, and one in particular intrigued me:  a police mug book from around 1900. (Note: I took several pictures, a practice that was once prohibited in most museums, but the advent of the cell phone has made it all but impossible to regulate, so in this museum at least it's permitted.) A quick online search reveals that it was Allen Pinkerton who invented the mugshot in the 19^th century. The Pinkerton National Detective Agency first began using these on wanted posters in the Wild West days. By the 1870s the agency had amassed the largest collection of mug shots in the United States.

The mug book in Philadelphia was both familiar and unfamiliar.  As you can see, it's a large bound volume.  Miscreants are included in the familiar two photographs, from the front and from the side. The first thing that struck me was that all criminals were allowed to wear their hat for the frontal photo.  Given the era, some of those hats, particularly among the women, were rather elaborate.

Yes, there were women criminals in the mug book.  Regrettably it was possible to view only the one double page on display (from December 1903), so I couldn't do a meaningful assessment of the ratio of men to women, but those two pages included four women. All were respectably dressed and behatted.  I couldn't decipher the crimes, save for one: Ethel Larson (wearing a very strange hat) was accused/convicted of Larceny. I presume the "Sus." that appears under many of the photos means "Suspect."  Other crimes included pickpocket, burglary, embezzlement, conspiracy (of what was not recorded), and breaking and entering.  There were two black faces on the pages.

The pictures are crisp and clear, the details written in legible script.  To a genealogist this is a strange treasure trove; to a mystery writer it's a delightful glimpse of crime in another time. There is a curious aura of respectability to the photos, despite the fact that the people depicted are accused of a crime.  All were allowed to clean up and dress up for the important act of being photographed.  Contrast that with the quick and dirty mugs shots of today.

How I wish it were possible to spend time leafing through this book, and others like it!  Would we find differences between the faces of then and now? Did a psychopath look different in 1903?  

How do writers create their characters?

Elizabeth Zelvin

One of my blog brothers on SleuthSayers, Louis A. Willis, wrote a post in which he wondered “how you give each character a personality that distinguishes him or her from other characters, even minor ones.” He wondered if “in order to create him or her, to give them personalities, including the various emotions each must have to be believable,” the writer has to build or rather become each character. His bemusement sparked a number of interesting comments from some of our blogmates.

Fran Rizer said, “When writing...new characters, I generally need to let them float around in my mind for several days to become real enough to me for their representation to seem right in the writing.” Fran also mentioned how easily she writes her recurring series characters, because she already knows them well.

R.T. Lawton, who has a background in undercover law enforcement, said, “I've learned to compartmentalize some of my brain, therefore writing different characters and their emotions and actions may come a little easier for me. Many times, in the grey wolf hours of early morning when my mind is not yet fully awake, it will dream up an interesting conflict situation which requires a certain type of character. This then also requires certain other characters as antagonists (or protagonists depending upon the situation). At that point, I usually reach back into the past, mostly for criminals and street people I've run across and how they would act/react to that scene. Sometimes these story characters are a composite of several real people, but even so they get bent to fit the story.”

Leigh Lundin said, “I like getting into the head of characters...becoming a character for a little while.” Herschel Cozine, who sometimes guest blogs on SleuthSayers, agreed, particularly with respect to writing a character whose basic profile differs from the writer’s, eg man writing woman, straight writing gay, white writing black etc. He said, “Become the character, no matter how much you may know about his/her wants and needs. There are certain universalities that allow you to do this.”

Dixon Hill used that discussion as a jumping off point in a later post, in which he said:

(1) My writing seems to function best when plot grows organically, through character interaction.

(2) When characters refuse to drive the plotline where I desire, I tend to let the characters carry the day -- unless this pushes the plot into dimensions unfit for the story as I’ve come to perceive it.

(3) If things get too far out of control, I try to plant something farther forward in the narrative, which I hope will lead one of the characters to alter behavior in a way designed to organically correct the plot growth in the desired direction.

He then admitted that all of the above was only half the true description of how he writes. “The second part of my true answer,” he said, “is: I daydream.”

My own contribution to the discussion was this:

For me, it's a matter neither of "building" nor "becoming" my characters, including my two male series protagonists, a recovering alcoholic in present-day New York and a young marrano sailor with Columbus. The voice comes from that creative well of inspiration some call the muse and others the unconscious, and the character starts talking in my head. I simply write down what he or she says and delete anything he or she wouldn't say. One of the reviewer comments I'm most proud of was when Steve Steinbock referred to me in EQMM as a "female writer who has mastered the male voice." As the classic line from the movie Shakespeare in Love puts it: It's a mystery!

I’ve had the opportunity to take a close look at my series character lately in the course of revising the three novels for new e-editions. The process has confirmed my sense that for me, the creation of character is intuitive and organic. It’s very much a matter of voice, especially with recurring characters. I’ve lived with Bruce, Barbara, and Jimmy for a long time, and I have a strong gut feeling about what each of them would or would not say or do. I’ve also seen how much they have developed over the period in which I’ve kept returning to them (three novels, four short stories, and a novella), each time with a little more mastery of the fiction writer’s craft.

Apart from the mystery plot and how the characters drive each story, the friendship between Bruce and his two sidekicks is a crucial element in the series. In a scene near the end of Death Will Help You Leave Him, Barbara and Jimmy are trying to comfort Bruce, who has just suffered a devastating loss.

“Why don’t you go home and get some sleep?” Jimmy said. “Come over in the morning.”

“We’ll have bagels and lox,” Barbara said.

“And maybe take in a meeting,” Jimmy said.

Barbara being Barbara and Jimmy being Jimmy—now, that did make me feel better.

Why Gatsby makes a lousy movie

by Sandra Parshall

Filmmakers seem to think they can make a good movie out of anything, and they aren’t deterred by past unsuccessful efforts with the the same book.

The Great Gatsby is the latest example of this triumph of ego over material. It was made into a movie in 1926, the year after the book was published, and was filmed again in 1949 and 1974, then turned into a TV movie in 2001. Did those lackluster adaptations deter Baz Luhrmann, the Australian master of gaudy spectacle? Did he study them to determine the reason why the book simply will not come to full-bodied life on the screen? Apparently not, because he went right ahead and made all the same mistakes, only more so.

Everyone is seduced by the beauty of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s narrative prose. Six passages from the novel, including the unforgettable final line, appear in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. But the dialogue, transferred to screenplays word for word, is virtually impossible for actors to speak convincingly. The performances in Luhrmann’s film are almost embarrassing to watch. I have never seen so much wooden acting outside of a high school drama production. Surely the director is partly to blame for the falseness of it all, the stiff delivery, but honestly, what can any actor do with Fitzgerald’s dialogue? People simply don’t talk that way.

The only time a genuine performance threatens to break free of the script’s constraints is when Leonardo DiCaprio, as Gatsby, explodes in the hotel room scene and grabs Daisy’s husband Tom, ready to kill him. Red-faced and snorting like a bull, DiCaprio is, for at least thirty seconds, mesmerizing. Alas, it doesn’t last, it can’t last, because the script must remain faithful to the book. The accident scene that follows is unaffecting because the characters haven’t become real on the screen.

Add Luhrmann’s taste for excess to the book’s inherent flaws, and you’ve got a sparkling, dazzling mess.

The novel is revered – perhaps more than it should be – not only for Fitzgerald’s lyrical narrative style but also because it captures the amoral, culturally hollow lives of a certain social set in the years before the stock market crash brought on the Great Depression. Gatsby, born poor, has done what a lot of Americans have: reinvented himself in the process of amassing a fortune. But Gatsby is not admirable. The driving force behind his ambition is his desire to reclaim a woman who is not in any way worthy of love. Daisy is selfish and shallow, willing to sacrifice anyone to preserve her own easy life, and Gatsby is a pathetic fool for loving her. That is perhaps the novel’s greatest weakness, and the reason it doesn’t translate well to film: the characters are despicable. The story is a dark tale of destruction, with no hero and no heroine. 

A gifted writer can keep readers engaged with such characters in a novel. Put those characters on screen, in the form of real, breathing human beings, make them speak dialogue that is awkward at best, and it’s hard to persuade the viewer care about them. (I couldn’t help hoping Daisy and her husband would end up penniless when the stock market crashed.)

Compare Gatsby to Mystic River, a great novel that was made into a great film. Dennis Lehane’s characters are so real that we recognize bits of ourselves in them. They may be flawed, sometimes profoundly, but they are always struggling to be better than they are, and even when they do the wrong thing we can understand and sympathize. It doesn’t hurt that Lehane writes pitch-perfect dialogue and it moves to the screen without a glitch.

Mystic River has what The Great Gatsby lacks: genuine emotion, so deep that it haunts you long after the story ends. 
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Note: When Fitzgerald saw The Great Gatsby's original cover art, shown above, he liked it so much that he added the optometrist's billboard, showing a pair of eyes, to the story. The novel received mixed reviews and sold poorly. It is now a staple of American literature courses. Recently it passed out of copyright and is now in the public domain.