I Want to be a Crime Novelist

Writers, like all artists, are concerned with representing reality, to create a more absolute and complete reality than reality itself. They must, if they are to accomplish this, assume a moral position, a clearly conceived political, social, and philosophical attitude; in consequence, their beliefs are, of course, going to find their way into their work. What artists believe, however, is of secondary importance, ancillary to the work itself. A writer survives in spite of his beliefs.

From the Paris Review "The Art of Fiction No. 6" interview of Alberto Moravia.

Since mid-June, I thought about Moravia's observation. At times, my locations shaped my considerations of his assertion. I thought about them while at a trade show in Las Vegas, a photography opening in Houston, sales meetings at a Club Med, along a beach on Florida's Atlantic coast, in hotel rooms outside Chicago, at a friend's home in Los Angeles, with my wife over dinner in hipster Brooklyn, and in bluntly unfashionable Newark. Understanding these environments became quickly challenging without what Moravia characterized as a "moral position." Since I lacked such a foundation, writing about them became an elusive endeavor.

This realization deeply bothered me, and connected with my deep dissatisfaction with the current unwillingness of most Americans to plainly and honestly consider what's happening in their own country. That reticence became most striking to me while watching TV in airport waiting areas. I came to the conclusion, from the mindless entertainment programs and shallow broadcast news reporting, that people just don't want to know very much. They may demand reinforcement of their prejudices, but that's a long way from a commitment to clarity, reason, and action. One of the few chinks in this armor is the crime novel, which retain a mass popularity with American readers and which can dive deeply into America's dark side.

Currently, I'm reading a Leonardo Sciascia short story collection titled The Wine-Dark Sea. He was the first significant Italian author to break silence about the Sicilian Mafia. Sciascia did this, not out of some desire to create lurid novels and motion pictures, but to address the reality of Sicilian lives. Other Italian novelists have created detective or mystery novels in which Italian society's contradictions and darker side can be usefully explored. Some of these novelists have quite interesting backgrounds, at least from my initial investigation of their work and biographies. (One respected crime fiction writer is an active jurist.) However, I'm just learning about them, the variety of their work, and their respective "moral positions."

While I was brooding about Moravia and Italian crime fiction, my wife and I began to discuss the possibility of a trip to Rome. She wants to photograph there. I've been hesitant to visit; I lived there over thirty years ago and contemplating a return stirred up a number of questions and personal history I simultaneously dread and cherish. Breaking that admittedly harmful psychological chain required something more than a walk down the Eternal City's memory lane.  Seeing the Roman settings for spaghetti mysteries (thank you, Sergio Leone) will help drive me, inspire me toward the type of fiction I am committed to creating.

My conclusion led me to contemplate writing Italian-style crime novels as a way for me to express our national reality from a Moravian perspective. I find America having much in common with Italian-style corruption. That realization is one reason why I so admire The Wire, which depicted urban reality with a clear perspective. Unsurprisingly, the series never won a major award. However, it's notable that Mad Men and Sex and the City, two popular TV series about New York-based "reality," were necessarily classist fantasies that lacked any "moral position." And yes, they won lots of awards.

I'm looking forward to writing about the real world, although I don't have any idea how it will evolve or become tangible. It's surely better than fantasyland.

Alberto Moravia, Italian Fascism, and the NSA Security State

Alberto Moravia
(Image: raistoria.rai.it)

Lately, I've been reading about the life and work of the 20th century Italian novelist Alberto Moravia. His novels and short stories, often exploring middle-class puzzlement or conformism in the face of Fascism, seem eerily connected to today's political and social situation in the United States. Two years ago, The New York Times' Rachel Donadio wrote a telling piece about Moravia's work and Silvio Berlusconi. As with the United States under the NSA shadow, the Berlusconi regime had taken, as Donadio noted, "all the oxygen out of the room."

Donadio cites a passage from Moravia's Two Friends, in which a character "attributes his lack of conviction -- about his career, his lover, his politics -- to his formation under Fascism." To quote Moravia's work, it had

wormed its way into his blood, not in the form of political allegiance, but rather as a kind of torpor and moral passivity, like a poison that slowly intoxicates and weakens the body. He was confronted once again with his feeling of impotence, but this time it not only affected his personal life but encompassed the destiny of the nation and humanity as a whole.

Torpor and moral passivity? Sounds like the American public's response to the devaluation of personal privacy, brought to you by the Feds and the military-technological complex.

Moravia's books remain in print. Many are translated into American English. The works of the author who wrote The Conformist remain strong and vital today. Can we say the same about our own society?