That's one last passage from Vikram Chandra's epic detective novel, Sacred Games. The book transplants the hardboiled code of the private detective into a noisy, international Bombay, reminding us of the brave heart beating inside every noir hero.
Today Chandra is our special guest. Welcome to my deceptively simple feature: Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing.
Jason Boog:
Your book dealt with violence and hardboiled detectives in unique new ways. Do you have any advice for a writer looking to work with pulp fiction stories in their own work?
Vikram Chandra:
Like you, I’ve always enjoyed reading noir fiction and police procedurals. They translate cross-curlturally so amazingly. If you look around the world, from China to Brazil, there’s always a detective story. Continue reading...
What I didn’t want to do was a parody or pastiche of the form. That kind of snobbishness is too easy, it tends to ignore that itself is falling into a kind of form. Most of the time I don’t find the distinction between genre and literature useful. If you really believe in this split, it weakens both ends.
The happy situation is when you’re engaging with the culture at the high and low end, working with all aspects of a culture. Try and think about the meaning of the [pulp fiction] form. You have to have a certain affection for it, then you try and work with it.
[As for violence,] often the most effective thing is not to deal with the physical aspect of it—don’t focus on which part gets injured and how. That kind of mechanical experience doesn’t work at all.
The emotional impact [of violence] for your character is what matters. If you can get that, then you are a long way towards helping the reader experience it. To paraphrase Hemmingway: “Find the one diamond sharp detail that carries the emotion of the whole scene."
One little sound or something that will make you shudder. That’s the trick.
» "From China to Brazil, There's Always a Detective Story" : How To Use Pulp Fiction Influence in Your Writing from ThePublishingSpot
"[F]ancy talk of protecting the good and destroying evil and seva and service would elicit only laughter. Even among [cops], this was never to be spoken about. But it was there, however buried it may be under grimy layers of... [Read More]
Tracked on: February 16, 2007 9:35 AM | Permalink to Trackback