A Matter of Style

The great Ursula K. LeGuin wrote a wonderful essay, “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie,” in which she talks about prose style in fantasy. Her core point is that if you’re writing fantasy, your prose style should not be the same as if you’re writing another genre. Imagine The Lord of the Rings in the style of Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett. (Not that the hobbits would be shooting each other: she’s talking about prose style.)

I’m currently engaged in an experiment wherein I transpose hard noir into a fantasy world. The protagonist is an homage to Richard Stark’s heavy-heister Parker; the basic story is the old fantasy trope: loot the lost temple; and there are elements of the lurid, vibrant style of Robert E. Howard. In short, if you live near the lost temple in question, a guy like Conan is an armed robber, so my idea is that the guy running the job is Parker, the ultimate armed robber.

To study style closely, I looked for examples of Richard Stark explaining himself—and then I remembered: Donald Westlake, who wrote the Parker novels under the Stark pseudonym, actually did this in his 1974 comic heist book Jimmy the Kid.

In brief, Dortmunder’s friend and jinx Andy Kelp reads a (nonexistent) Parker novel, and convinces the gang to follow it as a script for the job. Dortmunder hates the idea (and doesn’t like the novel or Stark) but goes along with it. Of course, it doesn’t go smoothly, because nothing ever works for Dortmunder….

This setup allows some comic meta-fiction. Westlake (Stark) includes some chapters of this Parker novel, immediately followed by the Westlake/Dortmunder version. Here’s Westlake juxtaposing his styles directly! For copyright reasons, I can’t include big chunks, but here’s a brief example:

When Parker walked into the apartment, Krauss was at the window with the binoculars. He was sitting on a metal folding chair, and his notebook and pen were on another chair next to him. There was no other furniture in the room, which had gray plaster walls from which patterned wallpaper had recently been stripped. Curls of wallpaper lay against the molding in all the corners. On the floor beside Krauss’s chair lay three apple cores.

Now the Dortmunder version:

When Dortmunder walked into the apartment, Kelp was asleep at the window with the binoculars in his lap. “For Christ’s sake,” Dortmunder said.

“Huh?” Startled, Kelp sat up, scrabbled for the binoculars, dropped them on the floor, picked them up, slapped them to his face, and stared out at the Lincoln Tunnel exit.

They hadn’t been able to find an apartment overlooking the Midtown Tunnel. This one, in a condemned tenement on West Thirty-ninth Street, had an excellent view of the Manhattan exit of the Lincoln Tunnel, bringing cars in from New Jersey. It also, since it faced south, got a terrific amount of sun; even though it was now October, they were all getting sunburns, with white circles around their eyes where they would hold the binoculars.

Kelp was sitting in a maroon armchair with broken springs; this was a furnished apartment, three rooms full of the most awful furniture imaginable. The floor lamps alone were cause for weeping. Kelp’s notebook and pen were on a drum table next to him, the drum table having been painted with green enamel and its top having been covered with Contac paper in a floral design. The walls were covered with a patterned wallpaper showing cabbage roses against an endless trellis. Some of this wallpaper had peeled itself off, and curls of it lay against the molding in all the corners. On the floor beside Kelp’s chair stood three empty beer cans and three full beer cans.

Although it’s relatively long in this context, the Dortmunder passage is lean and spare by the standards of most writers, packing everything into little space—only by comparison to Parker does Dortmunder seem expansive.

Opening: We get a response from Dortmunder (“For Christ’s sake”), and none from Parker. This is not insignificant. Parker is often described as a sociopath. His reactions to other people (whether it’s conversation or murder) are about necessity and utility, not social norms. Since Krauss doesn’t talk, Parker doesn’t either. Dortmunder, on the other hand, is a more sociable, normal person, so he voices his feelings, though it doesn’t accomplish anything. Both passages also follow the Show, Don’t Tell rule: we know what Dortmunder thinks because he says, “For Christ’s sake” (not “For Christ’s sake, thought Dortmunder”); lacking any external indicators, we have little idea what Parker thinks.

Background: In the Dortmunder version, the background hinges around one detail that captures the scene: the beating sun anchors everything. This inclusion allows Westlake to explain why they’re there, and the beating-sun bit softens the Exposition Now effect. The Parker version lacks background, which makes the passage cold and spare, but also gives less sensory detail, so it’s harder to imagine. Although in the actual Parker novels, background filling-in does occur, Westlake/Stark here hints that he cuts as much as possible. This is clear at the structural level: the Parker novels usually don’t include background until, in the final chapter of Part One (of four), we get it all at once.

Setting: This is the most interesting, because it’s got to happen in any fiction. Characters and events don’t float in space: you’ve got to put them somewhere. So how to create a somewhere and not distract from the point of the section?

In the Dortmunder version, the logic flows like this: armchair — apartment — furnished — specific pieces — dilapidation — curled paper — floor — Kelp on chair plus beer cans. The first detail comes from the opening (Kelp on the chair), and the final detail returns us to it, with a very human detail to follow on with (he’s been drinking beer and falling asleep). A little emotional content (awfulness) stands in for everything.

The Parker version has the same logic, pared to the bone. Chair — room — furniture — dilapidation — wallpaper — floor — Krauss on chair. We can infer awful (gray walls, patterned wallpaper), but Parker doesn’t care about aesthetics so it’s not mentioned. The final detail (apple cores) has the same return-to-plot function as the beer cans, but doesn’t lead to anything: Parker wouldn’t remark on comestibles unless relevant to the job. (In an actual Parker novel, Krauss might be drinking bourbon, which Parker notes but doesn’t mention, with Krauss’s alcoholism as a later plot point.)

Interestingly, the technique of building around a single detail is structured like a camera. It picks up a character, and some object connected with the character (chair) links us to the space (furniture of the room). This leads to sequential descriptive details (the furniture’s qualities), the last of which (peeling wallpaper) puts the camera in the location (floor) of the character. The final, sharp detail is about the character, not the external setting.

POV: I note that the description’s affect reflects POV. Dortmunder is a depressive, so the furniture is depressing. (“The floor lamps alone were cause for weeping.”) Parker is an emotionless sociopath, so the furniture is nonexistent. You could say the furnishings symbolize interiority, but I’m not sure that helps.

In fact, the narrative voice illustrates the POV right through the passages. Westlake/Stark is obsessive about this in a way I associate with first-person narrative (Wodehouse: “He uncovered the fragrant eggs and b., and I pronged a moody forkful”). Westlake uses obsessive POV-narrative alignment to generate depth: these two little passages tell us a lot about both Parker and Dortmunder, even though we never get any interiority other than “For Christ’s sake”!

So have I learned anything? I’ll conclude with a sketch, a reformulation of the same passage, starring my Parker homage character, Ghildor:

When Ghildor walked into the tavern, Vezna was in a booth with a pewter mug in front of him.

They had agreed to meet at the Silver Flagon because people there minded their own business. It lay hard by the wharf, where local laborers and traveling sailors could easily find it. Because of its closeness to the water, it also served smugglers: the rear doors led to not only the jakes but also the river, which on busy nights served the same function of carrying away unwanted materials.

Vezna was running a finger along a gouge in the table, his sheathed dagger lying to one side. Half the other tables had people sitting at them in twos and threes; weaving his way amongst them, a barrel-chested barman with thin dark hair and jowls made the rounds, filling the drinkers’ cups from a large earthenware pitcher. He slopped when he poured, so that the scarred tabletops reeked and the barman’s shoes stuck to the floor as he walked. Beside Vezna’s feet, tucked under the bench, lay a stained leather satchel.

Of course, at this point it sounds like noir, not fantasy, contrary to LeGuin’s argument. But I’ll start working on understanding Howard’s style once I’m happy with my take on Stark’s.

By the way: I’ve been asked to push both O. J. Lewis’s Legend of the White Magician, which I reviewed a while back, and also Allan Lacoursiere’s Crystal Raven. Of the latter, I haven’t read the sample all that closely yet; here’s the Amazon description:

The decision of a long-ago pope was a gathering storm on the horizon. Their enemy lay beneath the streets of New York City in numbers not seen since the thirteen hundreds when a meteor strike blocked out the sun and brought open warfare between the Church and the vampyres. Now the Brotherhood faces disaster unless they find a lost girl before anyone else did…. 

Looks like fun!