There’s a philosophical debate in Mathematics about whether mathematics itself pre-exists and is simply discovered as we progress into new areas or whether it is created as we go along and so each new discovery is less about having discovered something and more about having created it.
It’s a fascinating, unanswerable conundrum to grapple with, not least on account of how you can really get into the idea of learning, epistemology, and the philosophy of knowledge. Oh, man, one day I really must write a post about the philosophy of knowledge as applied to classic detective fiction, because the crossover is both huge and beautiful, and because I am a massive nerd who is seemingly going out of his way to alienate his own audience.
Anyhoo.
I do not intend to get into any of that today, but I want to look at something which is linked in my mind, partly for the nature of the issues it raises: whether books are written to cater to a particular audience, or whether they’re written in spite of an audience and the lucky ones just happen to find one. At first glance it seems obvious — that writers write books because readers want to read them — but if you’ve been following along with this month’s Tuesday posts, and my sincere congratulations if you have, you’ll know that nothing here is ever that simple. Or, if it were, you’d know that I seriously neglected my own self-imposed blogging deadlines. Anyway, it’s not that simple. At least, I don’t think it is.
“I. Am. Shocked.”
It’s probably fair to say that an author’s first book is written for themself, partly because an idea keeps nagging away at them, and partly because they feel there’s something they want to add to an existing body of work. I haven’t read Freeman Wills Crofts’ debut The Cask (1920), but his second novel The Ponson Case (1921) feels like someone working very earnestly to show a side of detection that was perhaps being neglected — earlier works tended to focus on smaller, short forms of investigation, or to copy the Holmes idiom with a genius detective simply leaping to the correct conclusion and there being little actual work involved (“But, of course, once I knew that the villain had size eight feet, it was clear that he was also a smoker and Wilson’s father was the only smoker in the case!“). Agatha Christie famously wrote The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) as the result of a bet with her sister, rather than because she wanted to revolutionise a genre, but there was still that element of personal challenge in it. At this stage, no-one was writing for an audience of more than maybe two or possibly three people.
As an author’s career progresses — and this applies more widely across all divisions of book-writing, not just novels and not just GAD — it’s fair to say that this focus changes. Once John Dickson Carr got a name for himself as a wrangler of fine impossibilities, he would have had a brand to uphold and an audience to repeatedly outfox. Christie was the same, as was Crofts, and would anyone who managed to last more than a handful of books in the genre. And, of course, the audience of an especially successful plotter would extend beyond merely those schmoes who were buying the books, as there would also have been the challenge of showing one’s fellow authors something especially new or devastatingly well-hidden. Indeed, collaborations like The Floating Admiral (1931) would give everyone a chance to try to out-shine their contemporaries, introducing a dual-headed audience impetus: to say to the average man “See? See how smart I am?” and to one’s fellow contributors “See? See how much smarter than you I am?”. The expectation of response is far greater once we hit this phase of an author’s career, because once you have a style or a series of expectations to uphold there comes implicit with that a group of people who are expecting you to uphold them, and therefore the book is written very much for the reader rather than the writer.
The game-playing element is no bad thing — Carr evidently enjoyed it, indulging in a challenge with Clayton Rawson to find a resolution for a particular impossible setup, collaborating with John Rhode on another baffling murder, and partnering with Arthur Conan Doyle’s son Adrian to produce a series of canon-expanding Holmes tales in which Carr, you feel, comes off very much the better. And the awareness of what other authors were doing, and the intention of trying to outwit them and so delight your reading public with your chutzpah or legerdemain, undoubtedly pushed GAD into a period of fecundity that has served the genre superbly for the last 80 or so years. Sure, everything has its enthusiasts — hell, Bigfoot Erotica is a thing — and so it’s possible for anyone to claim that any genre has done sufficient work to justify interest in it past its prime, but GAD walks that balance of familiarity and newness in a way that no other genre really needs to (as sort of discussed last week): we’d not be raving about the genre after all this time if there were three solutions, or only three possible deceptions, cycled through by the hundreds of authors who turned their minds to it.
“Did…did you say Bigfoot Erotica?”
But even this reader-focussed age of book writing will pass for most authors. Like anything, you do it enough times and it becomes stale. Hence Carr veering off into historical mysteries after churning out 50 books in 20 years, becoming increasingly interested only in writing about the sorts of things he found interesting (and Carr’s interest in history is there on the page from the beginning of his career). Equally, I’ve been arguing for a while now that Christie’s later books are really extended reflections on old age and perceived irrelevance — not the sort of thing fans of Evil Under the Sun (1941) would have been clamouring for, let’s face it — and that her final Miss Marple novel feels like little more than someone wanting to spend some time with an old friend. Now Carr and Christie may arguably be atypical in their careers since both managed a productivity beyond the mere mortals they surrounded themselves with for camouflage (John Rhode was clearly, like, a warlock or something), but even if someone doesn’t end up indulging themself for the last 16 books of their career the focus very much shifts from the audience to the personal for one reason or another: either “I don’t want to/can’t do this any more”, or a stark ignorance that the fan base they believe they’re writing for dearly wishes they’d given up the ghost back when there was sufficient dead horse left to flog.
The always-insightful Xavier Lechard and I exchanged some comments on Facebook recently concerning precisely how much of an author’s output may be considered typical of that author’s work: we’ve all done it — “Well, maybe avoid the first three, and he was going through a divorce for these five, and the last eight are clearly a sign of someone in decline…”. And that was in part what got me thinking along these lines; essentially, how much of any author’s work is written for the people who are going to buy it?
Because, well, a certain amount of balance is needed. Too much trying to placate or pander to the reading public and you end up with a lot of the problems the genre faces today — turgidly repetitive (though undeniably popular) long-running series like Jack Reacher and his various knock-offs where the notion of peril and invention is likely to throw people into apoplexy (see also: The Last Jedi, possibly the most hilarious example of the ‘displeaed fanbase’ as yet generated by the chaos engine of the 21st century), or cookie cutter I’m A Woman With A Nice House And A Fashionable Medical Condition In Some Sort Of Peril While On A Thing Or in A Place And I’m Divorced And There’s Someone Mysterious In My Life thrillers which might as well be written by committee and do precisely no-one any favours at all. And yet if you ignore the fans entirely and write the sort of book that scratches some itch in your soul…well, Late Career Introspection has produced multitudinous examples of books failing to connect with readers, and while you may be applauded as a burning iconoclast it will be quiet applause as a direct result of only four people reading your work.
All of which brings me back to my original point.
“Well, I didn’t like to say anything…”
The Invisible Event 
“Hell, Bigfoot Erotica is a thing..”
So it is: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/bigfoot-erotica-is-absolutely-a-thing-704846/
And so, apparently, is cryptozoological porn.
Wait till the world sees my new film starring the Mongolian deathworm: 5 ft long, bright red, sausage shaped, and shooting acid and electricity.
Or Debbie Does Nessie (and gets eaten). Speaking of which: I wonder if some people are turned on by female spiders eating their mates?
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Frankly, Nick, the mind boggles…
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How does your mind boggle, and have you seen a doctor? I find elastic minds boggle best. Or minds with eyes on stalks – you know, boggle-eyed mind bogglers.
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Oh, no, sorry, that was a predictive text error. It should end “too many bagels”. Which obviously makes everything much clearer.
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D’ough!
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Vore is a fetish, and I have no doubt it crosses over with furries (chitinies?). In general, the answer to “I wonder if some people are turned on by…” is always “yes”.
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I do wonder if your references to Bigfoot Erotica will bring a new audience to your blog via Google…
In terms of the actual topic you picked, I think many authors do write with themselves or a loved one as the primary audience. I know that was the motivation behind at least one of my Dad’s books and I think you only have to look at the chapter of Found Floating where Crofts rhapsodies about the workings of a cruise liner’s engine room to see that the author is writing for himself.
I do think there is a natural arc to an author’s career where, once they prove themselves in terms of sales or that they have an audience, they are edited less tightly. As an example, it is hard to imagine that an editor wouldn’t look at one of the flabbier late Carr’s like Deadly Hall and not recognize that the narrative could be tightened…
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Yeah, there’s no doubt that the author at times clearly had the last say on the content and so was clearly writing purely for their own amusement or intentions — and, yes, this is pretty much a guarantee when they’re late in a successful career. Although, in fairness, it seems to be more of an issue in a lot of modern crime fiction, too, leading me to wonder whether I shouldn’t set up my own editing business.
As for Bigfoot Erotica, ha, well any and all views of this site are welcome. I’m now just a little terrified, however, about the sorts of comments I may find myself moderating…
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I’ll be curious to hear which search terms start showing up in your Stats…
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Hopefully your filter catches them all! And that these Bigfoot Erotica enthusiasts also enjoy well-crafted locked room and impossible crime mysteries…
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Oh, man, the words “Bigfoot Erotica” have cropped up so much on this site in the last 24 hours that I’m definitely going to someone’s search algorithm. And to that person I can only apologise. I don’t even have a woodland-set impossible crime novel with with to placate you…
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Heh. Well that person may want to check out The Abominable Snowman episode of Inspector March of the Yard. The erotica content is minimal but at least they can enjoy a yeti impossible crime story!
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Aidan,
As an example, it is hard to imagine that an editor wouldn’t look at one of the flabbier late Carr’s like Deadly Hall and not recognize that the narrative could be tightened…
My own typically French negative opinion of editors aside, it has to be said that writers once successful enough can and do often become their own masters as publishers are careful not to bruise their highly sensitive egos. It’s clear from just looking at the doorstops that Stephen King’s novels have become over the last three decades that no one dares to rein him in anymore. Also – and here my typically French aversion for the trade surfaces again – an editor’s job is not to make sure the book is good, but that it sells. So considering that Carr’s books at the time sold in respectable numbers and that he was very touchy on the subject, perhaps his editor thought Deadly Hall was not bad enough to warrant throwing a fit. Hell, even The Hungry Goblin managed to saw print even though Joan Kahn thought it terrible, so…
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Clearly, the editors of Postern of Fate figured that Christie’s name sold her books, so why bother with editing? (Maybe the first draft was MORE confusing!!) Elizabeth George’s books should be cut in half . . . but maybe her biggest fans like matching doorstops.
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Alternative explanations include the editor thinking Carr was long past his prime anyway and that nothing could be done at this stage but editorial palliative care or that he was no longer important enough a figure to bother. It may also be that his publishers no longer cared – which would be coherent with my own thesis that the demise of traditional mysteries may have been engineered “from the top” rather than be the mere result of the disaffection of readers.
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Or perhaps as the crime novel gained traction there was a move into this sort of loose, detail-oriented, plot-light structure. I read a (rather well-reviewed, it must be said) modern crime novel recently and was appalled at how much of it was thoroughly unnecessary. Your typical GAD novel comes in at, what, about 80,000 words, and so much of what is publihed today is easily 20% of that again, and probably more — which would be great, if the plot supported even 60,000 words!
So maybe as moods chaged and the focus shifted these laters books weren’t edited too harshly because it was felt they fitted in with the shifting zeitgeist. Dunno how likely this is, I’m just writing this as it occurs to me now…
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And you know what they say about authors: “big books, big . . . “
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…word-count?
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Exactly!
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I agree that King is an excellent example of this. I suppose it probably doesn’t help that at a certain point the writer has more experience than the editor. As you say, if a book is guaranteed to sell a certain number of copies and repay the investment then maybe it is better to skip the argument.
Out of curiosity, were there any cases of prominent GAD writers switching publishers because they wanted the freedom to publish a different type of book or over editorial disagreements?
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I ca only think of Carr hawking his “Carter Dickson” books elsewhere because his first publisher didn’t want to put out too many John Dickson Carr novels in a year (modern publishers take note: we would be delighted with eight or ten JDC novels published in a year…).
I wonder f there are any cases of authors who didn’t usually write in the genre publishing with another house because their “usual” publisher didn’t think a detective novel would fit into their stable (or vice versa, if a ‘tec author dabbled in SF, say, like…er, all those authors who definitely did exactly that.
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The Carr\Dickson thing definitely baffles the mind given it means giving the business to another publisher!
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The same thing happened with Robert Ludlum, who was about the biggest author on the planet at one point. You’re right, it seems…weird to pass up on something that has a good chance of being successful, but then we don’t work in publishing and so don’t know how these things are reasoned, I guess.
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Erm . . . I’m trying to think of better “A” words you could have done . . . Adultery? Asphyxiation? Algebra? Autobiography of an Alpha Male?
It would be easy to dismiss this one as a “chicken or the egg” problem: an artist doesn’t exist without an audience for his work. Sad is the artist who is not appreciated until after his death (Van Gogh, most of the self-published authors you write about). But then “authors” like James Patterson are word factories who write strictly for their audience – in order to get their money.
Still, we have evidence, both authoritative and by inference, of some author’s intentions. Ellery Queen’s changes of temperament started as a response to changing audience moods and to the places he found himself published (women’s magazines). But there were definitely certain themes that Dannay adored and plugged into his scenarios over and over again, lots of socio-religious stuff that fascinated him.
I think you basically “proved” that in his dotage Carr reversed course to satisfy his own whims. It has been a while since I read Doug Greene’s marvelous biography (JJ, you really SHOULD read stuff like this!), but you don’t see those historicals on too many fans’ top ten lists. They were written out of love, not to make money.
What to make of Christie’s notebooks? She certainly thought over her plots. She took so much care for them to work. She must have done a lot of that for herself. When she wrote plays, she thought of her audience (keep it simple so they can follow) and herself (cut out Poirot because nobody can play him right!)
Now, I don’t understand what all the fuss is about big feet. But maybe if you describe it to me – slowly, and with plenty of detail – I can figure out what you’re talking about.
Oops! I just creeped myself out! Happy Halloween!
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Brad,
But then “authors” like James Patterson are word factories who write
Patterson hasn’t written a single word in years – he has people to do that for him and what’s worse, they’re proud of it. Your point still stands though. 😉
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Xavier,
This is my image of James Patterson: “He” is a high rise building in the Midwest of America. Each floor is run by one of his “co-writers.” You press “3” to get to “Alex Cross,” “6” for the Women’s Murder Club, and so on. It’s literally a factory that produces 10 – 20 of the exact same thing every year . . . and millions of people eat it up. My love of GAD labels me an “elitist,” and I’m good and sick of it.
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We’re entirely out of the GAD realms here, but I’m curious: does Patterson not write the Alex Cross books still? I thought that was the one series with solely his name on it these days.
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According to Wikipedia, he is the sole author of all Alex Cross books – he also writes standalones on occasion. Since I don’t read either I can’t say how his “personal” works compare with the ghost-written ones but he certainly has a claim to be modern crime fiction’s Alexandre Dumas in terms of (ghost-)writing methods and productivity, if not talent.
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Oh, man, I’d love to see “modern crime fiction’s Alexandre Dumas in terms of (ghost-)writing methods and productivity, if not talent” emblazoned across the front of Patterson’s next effort…
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FYI, I’m not deliberately avoiding Greene’s birography of Carr — I just can’t bloody find a copy for sensible money. I have no doubt it’s a fabulous book, and I’m iching to read it, but until it’s either reprinted or someone puts it up on eBay for a price I can afford…
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I look forward to your thoughts on the relation between philosophy of science and detective fiction. Will that have to wait until you hit P for philosophy or E for epistemology?
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It’s not science so much as knowledge: mutual knowledge, shared knowledge, awareness, etc. And if you’re lucky it might end up in C if for…Contrived Links!
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That sounds even more intriguing. Maybe under E for … “Esoterica”?
Not to be confused with the much anticipated entry “Erotica (Bigfoot)”.
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Oh, no, Bigfoot Erotica will definitely be under B. Not going to make you all wait that long for it…
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