Blubbering
Have you ever cried reading a novel?
No, I don't mean your first draft. I mean, has someone's work moved you to such a point that you shed real tears?
It doesn't happen often to me. Although I am a sucker for an emotional one-two punch. I remember reading Amy Tan's "Joy Luck Club" on a plane and getting to a scene where the mother explains why she abandoned her babies by the side of the road. Well, I had to get up and go into the bathroom to compose myself. What a wuss. What a good book.
I know this is hard to believe, given my reputation (see previous post) as a hard-hearted bitch. But I cry at books, movies, and commercials (that one where the Army guy comes home for Xmas and wakes the house up making coffee gets me every time.)
Maybe it is because movies are more inherently commercial, but they seem to evoke tears more readily than books. Why is that? Are novelists more leery of the "cheap" reaction of tears? I think that is certainly true in crime fiction today. It is rare to find a novel, in these days of neo-noir aping and dick-lit posturing, that we get crime books that appeal to the emotions. The last crime novel I can remember actually bringing a lump to my throat was T. Jefferson Parker's Silent Joe. Why is that? We are dealing with the themes of death and loss all the time. We describe blood and guts with clinical accuracy. Why do we pull our punches when it comes to showing the emotional outfall of death?
I was thinking about the place emotion had in fiction tonight because I happened to catch the last half-hour of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner." Now I know that movie reeks quaint in today's world, but that scene where Spencer Tracy delivers his speech saying, "If what you feel for each other is half of what I felt for my wife, you'll be all right." With Katherine Hepburn all misty eyed in the background...great stuff.
Other movies I get the Kleenex out for:
Breakfast At Tiffany's: Holly searching for the metaphoric Cat in the rain.
Roman Holiday: Princess Audrey, pauper Gregory Peck. Hopeless love.
The Vikings: Dead Kirk Douglas getting his Viking funeral sendoff.
Field of Dreams: Kevin Costner playing catch with his father's ghost. Waaaa...
Sophie's Choice: Stingo reciting Emily Dickinson over the death bed.
Old Yeller: Well, you know what happened to the dog.
Why doesn't fiction evoke the same response? I don't believe it is because movies are more visual. What is more powerful than the blank screens of our own imaginations? I think it might be because today's crime writers are leery of being labeled as soft when we go into matters of the heart.
I had a conversation with a high-placed editor recently. She told me she has noticed two trends in crime fiction recently: the decline of hardboiled "guy books." And the rise of romantic suspense. Now, let's not kid ourselves. There is some terrific hardboiled stuff being written right now, books that don't turn up their noses at emotions. Likewise, there is some utterly putrid romance suspense on the shelves these days, stuff that gets everything about police procedure and forensics wrong and gets really messy treacly about the romance part. Eeeewwww.
Maybe I am wrong. Or just reading the wrong stuff. What has gotten to you? What has made you cry? Movies are easy. But give me some books as well.
Or am I wrong in my belief that there is still room for well-wrought (as opposed to over-wrought) emotion in today's crime fiction?
posted by PJ Parrish | 8:04 PM
19 Comments:
I have to admit I've been blubbering all weekend, due to the story that took the nation by storm--Barbaro's fight for his life. I can blubber about a horse at the drop of a horse shoe.
I have cried at a couple of books by J.A. Jance. Sometimes you wonder if crime and crying mix, and you wonder what's wrong when you get to the end of a mystery novel and you find yourself tearing up. I think one of those books was SKELETON CANYON. Actually, I felt deeply for Charlie in AN UNQUIET GRAVE.
I'd like to see more heart in crime novels. I guess I should start by writing my own.
It probably depends on what makes you cry. I've cried in Andrew Vachss's books, which are as hard-boiled as they get. And not because the protagonist has "gone soft" (the Burke series), but because the author always tackles the ugliest of crimes, child abuse and exploitation, and it's almost this bigger existential (for lack of a better word) reminder of how ugly the world can be. But it's a different emotional reaction than, say, crying over a single character's loss or death (such as Sophie's Choice).
E
P.S. Can't watch Field of Dreams without welling up when he asks his dad to have a catch.
I love it when you're writing and really in the zone and your own words bring tears to your eyes as you're writing them. There's nothing quite like it. It's almost as if you're taking dictation or something, the words just flowing from the muse.
Off the top of my head, I can name a few books that brought tears to my eyes the first time I read them:
Hemingway's A FAREWELL TO ARMS
Stephen King's THE TOMMYKNOCKERS (I think I'm the only person who actually ever made it to the end of that book). Some of King's other books, BAG OF BONES, CUJO...
James Patterson's THE LAKE HOUSE (all right, you can stop laughing now, Kris)
Erich Segal's LOVE STORY
Many others. The most recent movie I can recall making be blubber the first time I saw it was DEAD POET'S SOCIETY.
I'm not mentioning the parts of these pieces that brought on the waterworks, in case I might spoil it for somebody. Anyway, that's sort of how I gauge if something's good or not--the emotions stirred by getting caught up in the author's fictional world.
Jake,
I got choked watching Barbaro as well. There is something about watching something so powerful yet so fragile that brought even those who don't care about animals to the brink. But why the hell do they have to keep replaying his mistep?
Jude,
I cry at Patterson novels as well. But for a different reason, I suspect.
I think I know what you mean about Patterson, Kris. He'll never win a Pulitzer for his prose, but there's something raw and primitive there, pure storytelling I think, that appeals on a mass level. If you take a paragraph out of context, you might think it was written by a 5th grader. Then again, some of Picasso looks like it was painted by a preschooler. I had to force myself to read Patterson at first, strictly out of curiosity as to why he sells so big. Then, somehow, I got hooked.
How does he do that?
Another book that brought tears to my eyes, by the way, was THE ROOFER by Erica Orloff. Powerful story, and the prose is first-rate too.
If you were lucky, you never saw the filly Go For Wand break down in the Breeders Cup many years ago. She fell---and they played it more often than they played the first space shuttle disaster.
The story of Barbaro, I think, is the story of redemption. The focus on his surgeon, the incredible things they can do, and his attitude (lookin' at the ladies already!) has remade tragedy into hope. It's been like a do-over.
I think that's why it has been such a big deal. Because it has "story" written all over it. A story and a journey, fraught with perils, and a hero to root for.
The most recent book that made me cry was Mary-Ann Tirone Smith's memoir, GIRLS OF TENDER AGE. Fantastic. Written like a crime novel, since she's a crime novelist, this book about the violent murder of a classmate when she was 10 evokes all sorts of emotions.
Jude,
You should talk to my sister Kelly. She is very articulate in defending him, for the same reasons you mention.
I get bitchy about Patterson a lot and he is an easy target. I have only read two of his books, both later ones and I am told I should give his earlier stuff a go. Maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks.
I remember crying over one of the Women's Murder Club series by James Patterson, I just don't remember which. If you've read this series, you probably know which i'm talking about (I don't want to give anything away just in case.)
The last book that made me get misty eyed was The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.
I will also admit that I've cried over a few of Dean Koontz's books. Odd Thomas being one of them.
As far as movies are concerned, I'm a sap for romantic comedies. I'm with Mark on the Sleepless in Seattle thing and it's so sad but I'll admit that I've cried during You've Got Mail when Meg Ryan's character is closing her bookshop for the last time and she sees the memories of her mom dancing with her when she was little. Sappy, i know.
Rozan's "Absent Friends" made me a crier and a liar.
Ex-girlfriend: "Your eyes look puffy."
Me: " Damn allergies. Got any Benadryl around here."
Now I'm not too embarrassed about getting misty eyed over Absent Friends, it was a damn fine piece of work, but here's a collar of shame I'll wear to my grave: [And why I ain't signing my name to this here note-- confession may be good for the soul, but as a former Catholic I know it's best done from behind the curtain of anonymity.] In 1970 the edges of my sixteen year old peach-fuzz mustache got soggy at the end of ' Valley Of The Dolls.'
Hey, how about them Chicago Bears?
Valley of the Dolls?? OMG...does that bring back memories or what. And what a GREAT movie. I mean, really. Neely O'Hara (Patty Duke) flushing Helen Lawson's (Susan Hayworth) wig down the toilet.
They just don't make em like they used to.
The wigs, or the toilets? :)
Mark,
WHEN THE WIND BLOWS and THE LAKE HOUSE, both about the genetically engineered bird children, preceded MAXIMUM RIDE. They weren't marketed for kids, but I can't remember any content that wouldn't be appropriate for a 12 year old. Maybe your son would like those too.
Oh yeah, another movie that does it for me: THE FAMILY MAN, with Nicholas Cage and Tia Leone.
I still have incredibly vivid dreams about a love who slipped away. Don't we all?
You can add "The Color Purple", "Meet Joe Black" and Peggy Sue Got Married' to that tear spewing movie list!!!
I sobbed reading ON THE BEACH as a teenager. Some years later, I sobbed again watching the movie TESTAMENT. And it's only now that I see the connection.
rk:
Oh geez. I forgot about On The Beach. I, too, read it when young and man, it floored me. I also can't watch the movie without getting very teary. End of the world movies truly upset me. Not the ones where monsters bring us to our knees; only the ones where man does it. The ending of Fail Safe is devastating to me anew each time I see it.
I can't believe no one mentioned GONE WITH THE WIND. Am I dating myself? I read it as a teenager and reread it every few years until I stopped bawling at the end. That point came when I become a writer myself, but it took a couple of decades.
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