Why fiction?

On January 18th, I had occasion to chair a meeting of Mystery Writers of America’s Midwest chapter while chapter Prez Julie Hyzy met with MWA bigwigs in New York. Our guest speaker, Daniel P. Smith, is a freelance journalist and author. Smith said he got the idea for his book from a ride-along he’d done with his police officer brother. One of the first calls of the tour was a homicide, a man shot by his 17 year old stepson. The scene had a transforming effect on Dan. He and his brother spent the rest of the shift searching for the shooter, leaving to Dan wonder how officers deal with their feelings when they have almost no downtime between calls. The result of that wondering was On The Job: Behind the Stars of the Chicago Police Department.

After the meeting, Dan stayed for an impromptu discussion with—among others—authors Sam Reaves, Tom Keavers and Centuries and Sleuths owners Augie and Tracy Aleksy. One of the subjects that arose was why we write fiction when real stories are so compelling and exciting.

A consensus seemed to be that we write fiction because we love justice and closure—things life rarely gives us between the parentheses of birth and death. In fiction we can explain the inexplicable, weave in all the stray threads, punish the guilty, and reward virtue and bravery and cleverness in ways that rarely occur in life. Fiction has a beginning, a middle and an end. Usually. Fiction enables us to know our heroes and our lovers far more intimately than in real life—don’t writers usually provide us with their thoughts and feelings, uncensored in moments of peril and loss?

Our discussion left me thinking about the subject the next day, and I recalled a philosophy course I took in college. The instructor told us that no one—this was forty years ago, mind you—writes philosophy any more, at least not the way Plato and Hegel and Marx did. Today’s philosophers are writing novels, plays and movies. (And, yeah, essays on in the commentary pages of news papers and publications like the New Yorker. But who reads those?) Modern mainstream philosophers are telling it like it is in fiction, unhampered by the need to be fair or to get the facts right. My instructor assigned J.B. by Archibald McLeish, Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, and Nikos Kazantzakis’ Last Temptation of Christ. I hadn’t thought about that class in many years, but the instructor was right, I think. He may not have anticipated blogs, and perhaps bloggers are today’s philosophers, but blogs are so ubiquitous and diverse that most serve specialized and largely convinced audiences. The big time philosophies are still being advanced by art.

That’s my take. What’s yours? Whose ideas are you listening to? Any straight philosophers we should know about? Where do we find them?

I’m thankful for my great grandmother. Or was it just a coincidence?

by Michael Dymmoch

Yesterday was Thank You day, and I hope everyone got thanked for something. I was thanked for being a good mom, and for having dinner at my house. I’m thankful to my family and friends for coming. (It was a lot of work to clean the house and cook—which I’d have to do anyway—but the jobs seem more rewarding if you’re sharing.)

Most of what I’m most thankful for, I try to mention as life goes along. My friends—especially the writers (I was an ugly duckling until I discovered other writers—we’re all ugly ducklings. They’ve showed me we’re all something else as well.), my editor, my readers, and all the people who do work for me--door persons, building engineers, cleaning staff, the people at the Book Bin and the Northbrook Post Offfice--Downtown Station. I'm also thankful for great books and great writers, for Charley Rose, Tavis Smiley, Oprah...

I’m thankful my mother taught me that two wrongs don’t make a right. And to keep asking myself, how would you feel if...? And that people need love most when they deserve it least.

I’m thankful my father taught me that if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. And for building a floor to ceiling bookshelf for mom’s books before he even finished building our house. (Now that the house is gone, I have the bookshelf to remind me of my dad.)

I’m thankful for my maternal grandmother who read to me every day until I learned to read for myself. And to my maternal great grandmother, who was such a compulsive reader she often got in trouble for reading when she should have been working

I’m thankful to my former husband for a number of things, mostly for our terrific son. Which brings me around to coincidence...

It was just a coincidence that we ever met. I was job hunting, with a list of places I planned to apply. I started with the company closest to my house, got the job, and stopped looking. I wasn’t looking for a husband or even a relationship. I’d planned to earn some money and go back to school. But on the job I met a man...

It was a coincidence that my grandparents ever met—on a cruise ship, going to Europe.

By coincidence (or really good luck), I’ve had some of the best teachers on the planet—even at schools that weren’t known for writing or philosophy or the things those teachers taught me.

Mystery writers are only allowed one coincidence per book. And it better be early on. And the book better be pretty damn compelling or it’ll get reviews like “The solid, sometimes tedious but always believable details of Thinnes’s investigation of a series of arson murders serves as ballast for some heavy coincidences that ground the plot.” ( Publishers Weekly on Incendiary Designs)

But in real life things you could never put in a book happen all the time.

The Examined Life

by Michael Dymmoch

One of the required philosophy courses I had in college was non-traditional. Instead of Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Spinoza or Nietzsche, we studied Catch 22, J.B., The Last Temptation of Christ, Mother Courage and other “contemporary” works of art. My instructor’s premise was that no one sits down to write philosophy anymore. Contemporary philosophers write fiction—prose, plays, screenplays, and music trying to make sense of the universe.

Independence day is a good time to think about philosophy. Nominally, we live in a democracy, an idea our founding fathers borrowed from ancient Athens. Back in Athens, only free men were allowed to participate. Women and slaves were SOL. America’s first efforts pretty much emulated that model. I like to think we’ve improved on it. Today women can vote if they will. Slavery is officially illegal. Banning books results in increased sales. Victims can sue when their unpopular ideas get them fired or demoted. Hemlock is reserved for mass murderers.

Socrates insisted that the unexamined life is not worth living. He had the courage of his convictions, too, electing to die rather than quit “corrupting” the youth of Athens by encouraging them to think. American society doesn’t ban thinking, but seems to discourage it by filling up every moment with noise. Some of it’s disguised as entertainment, much of it is advertising. Cradle to grave. Maybe that’s why literacy is vanishing and books sales are dropping.

But some of us are still trying to get through, to persuade people to revisit their philosophies. My first real exposure to homosexuality was the 1970 film The Boys in the Band. My parents hadn’t ever mentioned the subject, so I had no entrenched beliefs. The movie made me realize that people are more alike than different. So did Moscow on the Hudson, an entertaining but sympathetic look at immigrants and a reiteration of the melting pot concept of America. As soon as he was old enough to understand them, I introduced my son to Catch 22 and The Prisoner. I’m still pushing them on nieces and nephews. Some of the authors who corrupted my youth were James Baldwin, Mark Twain, Ray Bradbury, Dick Francis, Harper Lee, and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.

Who influenced you?