Writing the Novel_ From Plot to Print - Lawrence Block [49]
If you substitute antique furniture for Rudyard Kipling in what I’ve just recounted, you’ll see how the same principles would apply in our gothic novel. And if you’ll substitute whatever unfamiliar subject matter plays a role in your own novel, you’ll be able to see to what extent research is required.
What about geographical research? How much do you have to know about a place in order to set a novel there?
Once again, the amount of research advisable is both subjective and relative. Feasibility is a consideration here. I spent an afternoon in Forest Hills Gardens walking around the neighborhood where Bernie was to steal The Deliverance of Fort Bucklow, but Forest Hills Gardens is only a fifty-cent subway ride from my door. If I were writing that gothic novel we’ve been talking about—and I’m beginning to feel as though I am—I could hardly afford to go winging off to Devon for the sake of local color.
On the other hand, if I felt this gothic had enough going for it so that it might transcend its genre and be a candidate for “bestsellerdom,” then it might indeed be worth a trip to Devon to give it that added dimension. But if my plot’s nothing more than a good honest sow’s ear, in no way transmutable into silk-purse status, I don’t want to spend as much on research as I can legitimately expect to earn on the finished book.
When I wrote the Tanner books, my hero commonly visited eight or ten countries in a single novel, zipping sleeplessly if not tirelessly all over the globe. Equipped with a decent atlas and a library of travel guides, it’s not all that difficult to do an acceptable job of faking a location. A few details and deft touches in the right places can do more to make your book appear authentic then you might manage via months of expensive and painstaking on-the-spot research.
I don’t want to suggest that such research would be detrimental to a book, just that it’s often too costly in time and money to be undertaken. It’s worth noting, too, that in certain instances a smattering of ignorance can be useful. In the Tanner books, I’m quite sure my Balkan settings bore little relationship to reality. Then again, I’m equally certain the overwhelming majority of my readers weren’t aware of the discrepancy between my version of Yugoslavia and the real one. I was free to make Yugoslavia as I wished it to be for the purpose of the story I wanted to tell, as if I were a science-fiction writer shaping an uncharted planet to my fictive purpose.
I don’t know how comfortable I’d be working this way now; I’ve become a more meticulous writer, sacrificing brash self-confidence in the process. I know, too, that the cavalier attitude I showed would have been a mistake if I had been writing for a market composed of readers who knew Yugoslavia firsthand. One thing a reader will not abide is glaring evidence that the writer doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
The work of James Hadley Chase is a good example of this. Chase writes hard-boiled suspense novels set in the United States, and while he may have visited here briefly he certainly never spent substantial time on these shores. His American locations never ring true and his American slang is wildly off the mark, the American equivalent of having a dutchess drop her “aitches” like a Cockney costermonger. Because of this, his novels have never sold terribly well in the U.S. and most of them are not published over here.
But this doesn’t hurt him in England. Some of his readers may realize that the United States of James Hadley Chase bears about as much resemblance to reality as the Africa of Edgar Rice Burroughs, but the false notes don’t constantly hit them between the eyes—and they’re reading the books for action and suspense, not for their travelogue value. So Chase continues to sell very well over there, year in and year out.
Is Chase a poorer writer because the United States of his fiction differs so greatly from the real United States? I don’t think so. It’s worth remembering, I think, that fakery is