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Murdering literature

                                                             

                                                        

“When you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, however improbable,

                   must be the truth.”

                        -Sherlock Holmes (Conan Doyle), 

                         in the Sign of Four, 1890.

         

         The stories of Sherlock Holmes came to us as the first fascinating jolt that the world of grownups was sensible after all, as a tantalizing promise that growing up could be worthwhile too, and  also as a hair raising awareness that life was awash with cunning, evil forces, although conquerable by the power of reason. The dog which did not bark spoke volumes; the state of heels of a person’s shoes told us where he or she had been and was in what profession; that every crime left clues to be discovered.    

                                                          

      If not Sherlock Holmes, it could be the detective Byomkesh Bakshi in Sharadindu Bandhopadhyay`s 32 stories, Kiriti Roy in Nihar Ranjan Gupto’s nearly 200 detective novels in Bengali, or some other iconic  jasoos in over 125 crime novels by Ibne Safi in Jassosi Duniya in Hindi/Urdu. It was the same story in other languages too, French, Spanish, German, Marathi, Mandarin, and so on. Every book shop in the world, from huge emporia in Oxford street, London to a plastic sheet on the pavement in Connaught Place, New Delhi, has a big corner of crime fiction books, at all times, for  over a hundred years. Not accidental surely? Crime fiction calls to something deep in us.      

             

          Look at the date, Watson: 1890. What does it tell us of the Times? The fruits of industrial revolution were finally available to the masses. New, factory based economic activities had started; these attracted new laboring  classes from the countryside to the cities, which expanded in area and character; roads were widened; railways had started; doctors and lawyers had emerged to address the health and wealth of  the new urban citizenry, a lot of it women for the first time in history.  In short, modern civilization had commenced. Eiffel Tower was completed in 1889 while the first the World Exposition in London had already been held in 1862. The colonial empires of Britain, Spain, and France were at their peak and spanning the globe.

          All this was underpinned by mass education. The new citizenry was educated; it was fresh and optimistic while facing the new urban life; it wanted to know what was happening around it. The traditional “high” literature was geared for tastes of the upper classes and was distant, if not alien in every way. A new literature was sorely needed. Crime fiction was thus born, Watson -- interestingly, at the same time as newspapers, magazines, photography, films, telephones and telegraphs – and automobiles soon followed.

          The 1920s and 1930s have been called Golden Age of crime fiction. Dozens of new writers emerged nearly half of them women (unlike in high literature), led by the Three Queens: Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Margery Allingham. Other famous writers were F. W. Crofts, Michael Innes, G. K. Chesterton, Ngaio Marsh, Georges Simenon, Ellery Queen (actually pseudonym for two men), Austin Freeman, Josephine Tey, Anne Hocking, John Dickson Carr, etc.

          New heroes emerged alongside Sherlock Holmes. Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot in over 30 novels was a domesticated and fuzzy version of the hard, diamond-like brilliance of Sherlock Holmes, while Miss Marple was probably her own self in about 12 novels. Inspector Maigret of Simenon`s nearly 100 novels was a Frenchified and rakishly brooding Holmes. Father Brown of Chesterton was the comforting, insightful local parish priest solving wicked mysteries which baffled all. It was best seller business. Publishing exploded. Books were filmed extensively. Murder on Orient Express based on Agatha Christie`s novel of the same name, for example, remains a often remade film till today.

          It was an era of logical puzzles and whodunits. The world was basically a reasonable place, and writers left oodles of clues for the readers to guess the murderer, and the final outcome was logically just about possible. Classic templates for crime fiction were formed in that Golden Age. Corpse In A Sealed room, Two Suspects With Equal Motives, Murder By Vanishing Poison, Someone Else Posing As Murderer To Shield A Loved One, etc are still in robust use.

          This Golden Age can also be called the Age of Hope, when there was hope of making out a reasonable life and investigation of crime usually involved exposure of criminals`collusion with  local police, judiciary, business, and politics as regrettable but remediable exceptions. This subaltern, anti-establishment altitude has remained imprinted on the DNA of crime fiction till today; indeed it has become the norm . Hence its popularity.

        

                                            

                                                                                                                        

    “The law isn’t justice. It’s a very imperfect 

      mechanism. If you press exactly the right 

      buttons – and are also lucky – 

      justice may show up in the answer.”

        - Raymond Chandler, in the Long Goodbye, 1954.     

 

                Note the date once again, Watson. The unprecedented scale of soul-shattering slaughter of WW I could have been shrugged off as a one-off bad dream but the even higher scale and ferocity of WW II dented permanently something deep in what was hitherto thought as mankind’s assured march towards civilization. Some iron entered its soul. As inevitable, crime fiction reflected this change. The long era of Hard Boiled crime fiction started in earnest, and to those born on the wrong side of 1980s it has not ended yet.

          Wildly popular magazines played a big role in this era. Magazines like Black Mask, Dime Detective, and Detective Fiction Weekly had large circulation and helped spawn a wide spectrum of readers and writers, with centre of gravity shifting to America. Dashiell Hammett gave all-time classics like The Maltese Falcon introducing Sam Spade as the classic cynical, anti-hero private dick. The Thin Man followed, as did a dozen other novels. Raymond Chandler’s hardnosed, wry and unsentimental Christopher Marlowe, in classics like The Big Sleep, Farewell  My Lovely, and The Little Sister remain the paradigm even today. James M. Cain gave perennial favourites like The Postman Always Rings Twice, and Double Indemnity. Micky Spillane gave us My Gun Is quick, Vengeance Is Mine, One Lonely Night.               At the same time Graham Greene gave us the “Greeneland”, in his hugely popular “entertainment” crime novels like The Brighton Rock, The Third Man, A Gun for Sale, etc.   

                                   

          The tone and tenor had hardened. Crimes were now harsh, cruel, full of wanton violence; the mood was of cynicism, fast burn out, and blood-guts-and gore and the social setting was of pervasive corruption, sleaze, psychosis, serial killing and horrific sociapathy. Many sub-genres emerged from this Pulp Fiction, which is another name of  Hard boiled. Legal strand popularised by Erle Stanley Gardner has writers like John Grisham, Steve martini, and Scott Turow. The forensic strand has writers like Kathy Reichs, Patricia Cornwell, and Jeffry Deaver. A promising strand, of psychological crime novels, has writers like Dennis Lehane, Christopher Fowler, Jo Nesbo, James Patterson, Mo Hayder, and John Connolly. Medical thrillers of Robin Cook have spawned medical crime novels by Tess Gerritsen, Michael Palmer, Joshua Panogle, and Keith Baker. And finally, the police-procedural novels with writers like Michael Connelly, Martin Cruz Smith, John Sandford, and James Ellroy – a strand which has had an astonishing growth and has taken crime fiction well beyond the Hard Boiled era. Not coincidently, considering the contemporary zeitgeist many films were and continue to be, particularly in TV, anchored in hard boiled fiction. Some other famous writers of Hard Boiled / Pulp Fiction era – what might be called the Age of Doubt -- are Sue Grafton, Chester Himes, John D. Macdonald, Walter Mosely, and Ross Macdonald. The Hard Boiled age had lost its innocence about the “system” but still had hope. This age is not over yet.

     “On the one hand, everything is  connected,

     on the other hand, it is not."              

          -  Henning Mankell, in Before the Frost, 2002.

          Also note the tone this time, Watson. At the turn of the last century and the millennium, starting from 1990s an entirely new category has been added to crime fiction. Post Soviet Union, Post Berlin Wall, Post Hedge Funds, Post Bush-Blair-Putin, a new mood has emerged. While the Hard Boiled strands continue to be written, this new type has overshadowed it in today’s crime fiction market. 

           The focus has shifted from the private eye to the police inspector, who is a loner, at odds with the police system, and with a dysfunctional family. He or she is undermined and so tagged by corruption not only in police-system and politics but also in society itself. He/she solves crime, yes, and at the same time is witnessing the globalization of crime, criminals and also of victims. Befuddled by new, post-millennial existential drift and lost in the moral ambiguities of the new century the police detective is a Hamletian creature. This new type may be called Unboiled Crime Fiction -- of the Age of Disillusionment. This has caught today’s public imagination like fire. Not unexpectedly the centre of gravity has shifted out of anglo-american boundaries and has become globalized. Curiously, each writer now remains centered around a single city and keeps exploring its inner psyche.

          This Unboiled crime-fiction has another interesting dimension, and pundits are chewing over it. The curious point is that this style, which merges the two types of literature, the literary fiction and crime fiction, has come at a time when “high” literature is at a low ebb. Let alone Joyce and Steinbeck, etc or even Mailer, Bellow, etc what high literature has to offer today is no higher than Coetzee, Mantel, or McEwan.  Unboiled crime fiction is a fusion of both types which were hitherto considered separate. Readers of both  genre are loving it.

          Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus novels, which also gave a sparkling BBC films series( A Good Hanging, Set In Darkness, Complaints, Exit Music ) with dour, Scottish, despairing drunkenness of the criminal cityscape of Edinburg continue to be reprinted again and again. Henning Mankell`s Inspector Kurt Wallander novels – also a huge BBC film series – has  Inspector Wallander working in the small Swedish town of Skane, uprooted completely in personal life, tackling globalizing crime with a brooding angst like an Ingmar Bergman character ( Before The Frost, The Man Who Smiled, The White Lioness, The Man From Beijing ).  Michael Dibdin’s Inspector Aurelio Zen, both a pawn and  a victim of corrupt Italian police  and politics, can neither let go his pursuit  of crime nor do it unhampered (Cabal, Dead Lagoon, Back to Bologna, A Long Finish).

                                  

          Tantalizing and absorbing new literary locations have come to the fore. Robert Wilson with Inspector Falcon books centered around Seville, Spain and Inspector Medway novels centered around Benin, Africa have given us A small Death in Lisbon, The company of Strangers, and The Silent And The Damned. Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti`s charming novels centered around Venice are as much about the new Italy as about crime (A Death in Venice , Noble Radiance,  Fatal Remedies ). Michael Stanley (duo) have given us Inspector Kubu novels like A Carrion Death and A Deadly Trade centered in Gaborone, Botswana with breathtaking elegance and sad insights characteristic of Africa. Andrea Camilleri`s likeable but unpredictable Inspector Montalbano, with staunch left-wing altitude, solves crimes in Sicilly with panache and humour (The shape of Water, The Terracotta Dog, The Scent Of The Night, etc). John Burdett’s startling and cynical novels have Inspector Sonchai Jitleecheep vainly tackling crimes of sex, drugs, and global politics in Bangkok ( Bangkok Tattoo, Bangkok Haunts and Vulture Peak ). Arnaldur Indridason’s Inspector Erlendur explores the cold and dark landscapes of Iceland as much as crime ( The Draining Lake, Silence Of The Grave, and Jar City). Petros Markaris has his dictionary reading Inspector Haritos solving Athen`s crimes with cool aplomb ( Late Night News, Che Committed Suicide, and Expiring Loans ). Unboiled crime fiction has lost hope in the “System” and is just carrying on doggedly.

          Indian crime writing is by and large imitative or stuck in the Hard Boiled mode or just plain whackiness – although a new bunch of writers is now taking up crime fiction seriously, as also a clutch of new publishers. Will Indian crime fiction finally come of age and become global in style and maturity? Time will tell.  

          But this new and expanding Unboiled crime fiction, now over 20 year old globally, has already launched the 21^st century in its Age of Disillusionment.

                                                

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Michael Jackson : Sign of Times

Michael Jackson Chronicle

The funeral and memorial services are now over; now one can take a cooler look at Michael Jackson.

At death he was 50. The current generation is just discovering him since he was already burnt out during most of the last decade. When he had burst upon the rock music world – it wasn’t much of a burst, a yet another arrival really – in the late seventies / early eighties, his own generation had iconised him. Therefore at least two generations – although in the current era of marketing - overkill the generations get quite fudged – would not have experienced the legacy inherited by Jackson and, arguably, sold away and finished off by him. In his obituaries he is rightly remembered as a pop star, but he started his claims to fame as a rock star, which is a deeper and much more venerable stream within pop music.

Rock music escaped from its deep and brooding Negro netherworld (and I use the word negro in its historically full, uncluttered, un-American, respectful sense) when Elvis Presley sang it on American stage without having to blacken his face by burnt–cork black paint. Before him many other whites had played rock music, but they had to blacken their face to play “black music” in white parlours and bars –because actual negros could not be allowed in. Presley unlocked this huge genie of the music market and brought in for the first time rich whites as customers. This was 60 year ago, a liberation of the industry in a sense.

And what distinguished rock music ? Being negro in origin it had, obviously, a powerful mixture of sadness, anger, dissent, rebellion, and a quest for newness and change. It had gone beyond the world of Blues and even Jazz. It was quintessentially 20th century; it was a thrusting popular music in the social sense, even global and civilizational. The musician-artist spoke in the name not of him/ herself but of the whole people. It may not be so well understood today, but this was something new in music – the going beyond personal.

From Presley’s Jailhouse Rock, to the Beatles :

imagine there is no country,
no religion too
or,
we all live in a yellow submarine

Jimi Hendrix with his social utopias in:

all along the watch tower
or,
purple haze…

Eric Clapton’s lyrical angst in :

change the world
or,
i shot the Sheriff

Rolling Stones’ anarchic pyrotechnics like :

i cant get no satisfaction
or,
paint it black

and so on through to Bob Seger, Pink Floyd, Bruce Springsteen, etc. -- I have just picked up names randomly, without any order or hierarchy. Those who were there and are still here today will remember wistfully how powerful, densely packed and pervasively iconoclastic was the world evoked by rock music then. It seems an ice-age ago! So when Michael Jackson came with his:

I am bad

it had the tenor, angle, and stance of the huge tidal wave of rock music that was just turning to ebb. But as his later music showed, his “badness” was not ironical or even italicized, it was merely personal. Michael Jackson got an entry into rock on a false pretence of rebellion, which he quickly encashed by going away from rock music`s bedrock – into the realm of purely personal. He finished off rock n roll’s soul – for thirty million pieces of silver. I remember I had watched his rise with a sense of betrayal and loss.

Today’s obituary writers are unconscious of the irony, and are certainly unabashed, when they recall with admiration how Michael Jackson changed “marketing” of his music – what would today be called the business model. He transformed himself into a “brand” – a whole package made up of persona, music, performance, merchandise, memorabilia, etc which was professionally premarketed, marketed, and post marketed.

Thatcher and Reagan had got hold of global policymaking space by then ;labouring classes of the world were in retreat. Michael Jackson’s t-shirt or cap was as much an item as his song. Earlier nobody bothered what cap or shirt a Lennon or a Hendrix wore – in fact noticing all that would come in the way of rock! In short, instead of financial mavericks and amateurs that the titans of rock were, Jackson was their antithesis – as MJ Inc. Investments in MJ Inc. were huge; so were the returns – it was the first true transnational enterprise in music industry.

A character in an Ian Rankin’s novel – or is it Robert Wilson’s ? I forget – says that capitalism killed off music. He is half right. Investments in Beatles, Clapton, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, etc were very capitalistic indeed – and most often these sucked them dry. But it was competitive capitalism; it had as many ”promoters” as there were bands; it took chances, it dreamt and hoped of making it big , of hitting the musical and financial jackpot.

In Michael Jackson’s case it was monopolistic capitalism which is an entirely different animal indeed; it is incorporated and syndicatist not individualistic ; it pre-empts and undercuts and almost eliminates investment risks – by the expedients of rearranging the product to its lowest common denominator , by packaging it with much other merchandise, and by this , and by that ; in short by turning it into a widely tradable commodity.

Here is the dialectic then: when the size and scope of investments/returns becomes too large it changes its character of competitiveness by losing grasp on its own product , becomes speculative and then tries to eliminate competition by subverting, suborning and rigging the market – thus smothers itself eventually by abandoning its life-blood : competition. Latest big example is the US icon General Motors, which killed itself by rigging fuel and taxation policies in US congress/senate while producing inefficient, large, and polluting cars. It was this monopoly capitalism, maturing since 1980s, that had killed rock music through
Michael Jackson (of course there were others too, but he was the icon).

It has done the same to heavyweight boxing, toy-making and films (remember Kurosawa could not get money to make films in a prosperous Japan!). It is in the process of doing it to cricket (20*20), computer-games and novel writing. It has failed, so far, in football, because despite everything the very nature of the game itself produces in contrast to Germany champagne football of Brazil against
all odds-- and also enables a Slovenia , or Egypt to sometimes beat Brazil !

And what is the essential nature of Jackson-era pop music ? It is the music of the purely personal space ; its artists have no singularities, no overreach, no astonishment, let alone a vision to give.

When someone sings “I love you, baby” at the age of 18, it is fine; when s/he sings “ I love you, baby” at the age of 48 its is also fine; but if s/he has been singing only this during the intervening 30 years, it means something else – it is not fine ! Today’s pop music is a gigantic and severally packaged commodity of soft porn, consumerist, perennial pre-teenagehood. It is predigested Pap music; it is music for the hotel lobbies, waiting rooms, lifts, for corporate and government ceremonies; it is general in character, global in idiom ; it is muzak. How poorly nourished are the souls of today’s youth!

What Michael Jackson did to music market is much talked about, not so much what this market inevitably did back to him. He was made to cross fundamental boundaries; he was made to break with old semiotics.

He was obliged to undergo advanced medical surgical operations on his face, skin and body so as to get the look of a smooth, hairless, hermaphrodite creature – both male and female. This doubled his sex-appeal and revenues. Before him rock stars were overwhelmingly male -- an occasional Donna Summer, etc were exceptions -- working with phallic guitars as their main instrument. Michael Jackson with his hermaphroditic instincts opened the field for females, but instead of giving them truly innovative female instruments he gave them too the phallic guitars ; in imagination or otherwise an hermaphrodite is after all , fundamentally half-formed !

Without Michael Jackson, a Madonna would not have been possible. Of course, after some time women pop stars had the good sense to drop the guitar – some tellingly took up the cello, but most went the only available Michael Jackson’s way : of being “entertainers”, not messiahs. What a loss ! Imagine, a female Lennon, a female Hendrix, a female Jagger…

This was not all. The early white converts to rock music of the blacks, had to acquire legitimacy by painting their faces black while performing. Michael Jackson did the dialectically opposite. After entering the legitimacy of rock music as a black star, he surgically turned his face and body white in order to have double market-appeal and revenues -- and thus lost legitimacy. In this Faustian deal, he had to pay by abandoning the contrarian spirit of rock. He was forever driven by the very market forces he worshipfully brought into rock music , seeking to be both black and white, both male and female, both boy and man -- as the grossest business model possible. These forces turned him inside out; they were too much for his small self. In the end that is what he was reduced to – skin, hair, guts, falling apart.

But there is this little wonder of an end-note struck by Michael Jackson. Nearing his end he converted -- secretly, because otherwise his market would have been hit -- into Islam; a well trodden path of many a venerable American blacks. This speaks volumes, about blacks, whites, faiths, and America. But this is not the time or place for going into that.

Except this bit : after the collapse of Soviet Union, what remains in the world`s ideological space as the “principal contradiction” of the times -- in the place of capitalism vs socialism? Perhaps none other than capitalism vs islam, however debased and lumpenized both are today and however sad such a denouement may be. While losing his beloved money, and senses, and everything else, perhaps the dying old rockster’s spirit had made a final true leap to grasp what he should have always held fast to : people’s verities.

Cartoon Tota-Myna:Slumdog wins 8 Oscars

Steetdogs -- Not Millionaires

STREETDOGS – NOT MILLIONAIRES




Like many diabetics who have allowed themselves to be beguiled by the medical industry, which in this century is totally driven by the lucrative mode of disease-management instead of the old , unprofitable quest of curing diseases, I too take regular 50 minute brisk walks in my neighbourhood. I do it in late evenings since I have another unhealthy habit of reading/sleeping late in the night – so the health-giving dawn greetings to the rising sun in tasteful parks are not for the likes of me.

My walk timings coincide with the waking up time of the neighbourhood streetdogs, who are then just revving up after daylong healing slumbers, for their yet another nightlong vigilance and customary combats for territory and fairer sex. All my walking routes pass an informal cluster or two of ragpickers shanties created bang upon Designated Green Areas against all real-estate business logic, fiercely de-facto protected by municipality and police defying all laws and regulations , since these make their own life a bit easier. And , their camp-follower packs of streetdogs have seen me occasionally walking along and chatting with resident ragpicker children returning home after their working day, they kind of know me and sometimes tailwag me too in a friendly way – even when I am alone. I admit I feel a bit proud and socially integrated.


But there is another aspect to this. Out of habit and a lifelong desire to pass inconspicuously I mostly dress like gentlemen of the land. Trainers, jeans, T-shirts in summers and trainers, jogging-gear by Nike/Adidas types, wool ski cap, zipped jacket in winters. The dogs have mostly seen me kitted out thus. But in winters sometimes it is too much bother dressing up. So I keep my indoors gear of kurta-pajama , ski cap, with a jacket zipped to hide all sins of deportment , and the technical necessity of trainers of course. It is dark and cold , and who will really notice an old — nay, middleaged —curmudgeon like me anyway?


Well , dogs do. Puzzled, half recognizing me from their canine algorithms, they give me warning barks from far distances to become recognizably like myself or clearly otherwise — an intruder. When I get near they recognize me of course, but they are not pleased. They avert their faces refusing to acknowledge familiarity, growl frustratedly, and pretend to scratch behind their ears in detail till I pass. Some newcomer or visitor to the pack even growls at me frontally and frankly. And when I tell him/her to shut up , it is done , but done reluctantly. Walking away from them I hear their baffled barks at the sky of What-- The – World-- Is-- Coming – To type. Now sahibs are taking to lower class drag!


Truth is, they are acutely class-conscious dogs. Being streetdogs they have never seen gentlemen in indoor muftis. They are familiar with cars of course; gentlemen in polished shoes walking half a dozen steps to the cigarette wallah or to ask for local directions. And memsahibs in colour and plumage with loud consumerist voices are top-- of – the-- social—heap of course; they often empty out the high- net- worth uneaten food of their overfed offspring`s Tupperware tiffin boxes for dogs`memorable picnics. Teenage louts on motorbikes they recognize shrewdly as future sahibs and therefore shrug off tolerantly. But dhotis and pajamas and cheap saris of the domestics and other hanger-ons , lungis of hawkers, rickshawpullers, or cheap rubber chappals, and , god forbid, bare dirt- encrusted feet—no, no, emphatically no go. Reactivating their vulpine specishood they surround, hound , and harry away such lower class riffraff-- protecting property and title faithfully.


Not just dresses. From afar they can accurately gauge gait and intent, and of course the various shades of class confidence, and calibrate their response accordingly. For working classes , more so for unorganized ones, their barks and growls are unmistakable, aggressive and state-sponsored. And this is no mystery. They are streetdogs of Delhi after all, where all classes petition and contend; and their district is of among the topmost ratings in Realty Index. All their life`s karma is consumed in the outer reaches of the shifting tides and ebbs of power of their neighbourhood`s sahibs and memsahibs. Streetdogs know the score alright. They have to. Like slumdogs.