I have
finally understood the flaws in my first and forsaken novel. I wrote it in the wrong
language, I targeted the wrong public (add wrong agents to that) and I selected
themes and settings, that despite their glamour, were not easy to appreciate or
relate to. In our urgency to be original, we may force our audience to waddle through
the peculiar, the unfamiliar and the bizarre, and that applies to foreign
cultures, as well as exotic settings and customs.
Identification
is crucial to establish a connection between reader and story. Any plot or
character quirk that shocks, alienates or angers the reader gives excuse to
throw the volume into the garbage can. Therefore, no matter how exotic the
milieu is, a familiar element must always be present. This not only applies to American readers,
it´s a universal phenomenon. To enjoy a
good reading we need to feel comfortable with the material. Without friendly
crutches, we cannot wander too deep into unrecognizable territory.
Unlike films,
books lack visual props that turn the exotic into the” known.” This is why epic
fantasy writers go through pains to explain to their audience every little
detail of the alien civilization they have fabricated, sometimes even adding
maps to establish a geographical location. I am no friend of “high fantasy.”
The reason I made an exception with Song
of Ice and Fire was George R.R. Martin´s genius in basing his mythical
lands and cultures in historical or earthly references. Thus The War of Five Kings
is inspired by The War of the Roses, the North resembles Iceland or other Scandinavian
lands, and Winterfell is based on old Celtic kingdoms. As I read the series, I visualize the Night
Watch as the French Foreign Legion or The Templar Knights, The Dothrakis as
Huns or Mongols, and Robb Stark as Bonnie Prince Charlie.
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| "Bonnie Prince" Robb |
Novels, even
historical fiction, may include factors that could prove too outlandish for the
reader to swallow. Historical romances are sometimes discarded if considered
racist or presenting other offensive ideologies. We know child brides, sibling
marriages and good Christians owning slaves are disturbing topics even if set
in days of old.
Foreign
cultures, including those that are part of the Western civilization, have to be
treated wisely. For centuries, the British looked with distrust upon the
French, branding them as a hedonistic and depraved people. A Victorian
habit (later picked up by Americans) was to use French terms to euphemize anything
dealing with sex or intimacy. Ladies spoke of their hygienic habits as doing
“their toilettes”, miscarriages were
known as faux accouchements, condoms
became “French letters” and a deep kiss was described as “a French kiss.” The
French became “The Other” as dangerous and bizarre as the Sioux or Zulu.
To make the
English-speaking world familiar with European decadence and immorality, writers
used the “innocents abroad” subterfuge. Many Americans who couldn´t afford a
trip to Europe got to know all its glitter and wickedness through the works
of Henry James, Edith Wharton, Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway . Although their
prose was guided by different styles, purposes and ideologies, the aforementioned
writers shared a common bond: their protagonists were Americans that, despite
their wealth or background, had much more in common with the reader than the
European characters they mingled with. Just think of
the bunch of expatriates in The Sun also Rises.
Take a look
at recent New York Times Bestseller lists and you´ll see the formula alive and
kicking. Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife
describes the trials of poor all-American Hadley Richardson struggling with husband
Ernest Hemingway’s philandering in Jazz Age Paris. In The
Expats, Chris Pavone depicts the efforts of an American wife to go native
in Luxembourg after her husband moves the family to Europe. I am not surprised
that these two novels are among the most read in modern day America. What would
surprise me would be a bestseller about the trials of a Luxembourg wife in her
native land.
The
principle of pitting the Anglo protagonist against bizarre cultures has been
widely used in stories set in the Third World which was culturally-speaking
much more alien than Europe, therefore, more treacherous. When writing about
their vast colonial empire, The British made sure to have at least one Caucasian (ergo English)
protagonist usually involved in a doomed relationship with a member of the
foreign culture. You see the formula in E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India, in John
Masters’ The Bhowani Junction, and in
Paul Scott’s The Raj Quartet.
This way of
describing the exotic became such a cliché pattern that when Louis Bromfield
wrote The Rains Came he had as
protagonist an expatriate half-American, half- English nobleman who divides his
affections between the teenage daughter of a Southern missionary and a British
aristocrat. The latter, Lady Edwina Esketh (faithful to the other cliché) dooms herself
by falling in love with an Indian doctor. Even Ruth Prawer Jawhalah, an
Austrian Jewish refugee married to a Hindu, relied on the familiar formula in Heat and Dust, the story of two British
women that, on different generations, travel to India and get pregnant by
Indian men.
Many English
authors have made careers abusing the “innocent abroad” formula, from John Le
Carre´s British spies gallivanting over Eastern Europe to Graham Green’s proper
English gentlemen meeting danger in some Latin American spot. This applies to
Australian authors as well. James Clavell uses it to expose Japanese
Sixteenth-Century culture in Shogun
and Nineteenth-Century China in Tai-Pan.
To interpret the Indonesian Revolution, Christopher Koch does it through the
viewpoint of an Australian journalist in The
Year of Living Dangerously.
Despite how
sympathetic the authors were to foreign culture, or how much they loved the landscape,
they always reverted to the safe recourse of exposing it through Caucasian eyes.
This was not racism, but the need to describe the bizarre through familiar eyes.
It´s why bestsellers like The Godfather
and The Joy Star Club can safely
foray into alien cultures because the main plot deals with Italo-Ameticans and Chinese-Americans
living in United States. It reminds me of the first agent I approached. I
picked him because his advertisement said he was desperately seeking novels
dealing with Italian characters. I sent him my manuscript, the story of an
Italian girl growing up in Fascist Italy. He rejected it politely saying he was
looking for something “about Italo-Americans.”
The Godfather-Sicilian sojourn
There are
some exceptions to the rule, but beware! Under scrutiny we find that same
prototype underneath “exotic” bestsellers such as The Kite Runner, and Lisa See’s novels about old China. Both Khaled
Hosseini and See are American-born, they write in English, and are familiar
with the culture, way of thinking and language of their target audience. They have
ways to make the exotic familiar and avoid the hazards of the bizarre.
The exotic
does not only refer to other cultures, it could even be a genre. Traditionally,
military fiction and spy novels target a masculine audience. According to
statistics, in United States more women read and buy books than men. How to make
“masculine” subjects attractive to them? Well, it´s a little like making children
eat their spinach. The plot has to disguise the bizarre aspects of the offensive
subject and present it in ways The Readerhood finds familiar and appetizing
such as having a female protagonist.
When doing
research for my previous entry on military fiction, I went through American
bestsellers of the past five years. I found that the few that actually dealt
with war had women as protagonists (War
Brides, The Piano Teacher and
currently The House at Tyneford). In these
stories, the battlefield becomes a peripheral subject. What matters in War Brides is the clash between British
women and the culture they spouse after marrying American soldiers. In The Piano Teacher, an English woman in
Hong Kong is involved with an enigmatic countryman marked by his World War II
experiences and in Tyneford, a Jewish
girl, fleeing the Nazis, finds shelter as a servant at an aristocratic British
manor.
How
different from another war novel that briefly passed by the NYT list. I am
talking about David Benioff’s City of Thieves
(2008). Benioff is a very famous screenwriter,
telling you that his credits include “Troy,” “The X Men,” “The Kite Runner” and
“Game of Thrones” (which he also produces) tells you all. Aside from his
brilliant scriptwriting career, Benioff has also written and screen-adapted The 25th hour, another
bestseller and a bit of a cult book. With those impeccable credentials, he adventured
himself into historical fiction with City of Thieves.
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| David Benioff |
Set in
besieged Leningrad during the Second World War, the novel follows the adventures
of a teenage boy and a much older deserter throughout the city´s underworld and
further into partisan land and eventually the German lines. Full of tragedy and
black humor, this combination of coming-of-age novel and war- buddy drama
reminds me of the great masterpieces of the picaresque novel with this blend of
humor and horror. The naïve hero and his rogue companion become a sort of Russian
Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.
I love City of Thieves but I sincerely doubt
the book would have made it to the bestselling lists if Benioff had not
authored it. The subject matter and setting are too foreign to appeal to the
average reader. While praising the novel, reviewers concur that Americans know little
(and care less) about the Eastern Front or Russian experiences during WWII. A
telling sign is that despite Benioff’s clout in Hollywood, the novel has not
merited a film version.
As I said
at the beginning, this form of ethnocentrism is not an American trend only.
Just as Hollywood needs to remake foreign films, in Latin America, successful
telenovelas will merit different versions from country to country. “Ugly Betty”
was originally created in Colombia for a
Colombian audience, but now it has versions from Mexico to Israel, from Russia
to India.
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| Yo soy Betty La Fea (The original) |
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| Ugly Betty (the remake) |
The
principle behind this remake fever is the same one that has Hollywood creating a
local version of “The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo.” Some members of the audience will need to see
a good story reenacted by their own actors, speaking in their own language or
accent, and expressing their cultural idiosyncrasies. That is conductive to
create the relaxed and cozy atmosphere needed to enjoy a film or a book.
Going back
to literature, it is my experience that only two genres bypass the formula and
safely waddle into exotic cultures: mysteries (historical and others) and the
late Twentieth Century bodice-ripper because they turn around universal subjects:
murder and sex.
In your reading
habits, have you noticed this need to blend the exotic with the familiar? Do
you seek stories or characters that you can identify with? Do you reject novels
that deal with subjects that are so alien to the point of making you
uncomfortable? Gives us examples.
