Acknowledgements
This essay resulted from the sincerity and straightforwardness implemented by my peers during the review process. It wouldn’t have been possible if not for genre conversations with Abigail Lee, Zimeng Li, and Ryan Forgosh. My deepest gratitude to Samantha Palmer for taking this essay to the next level with thoughtful comments. Professor Mary Kovaleski Byrnes for her excitement towards my topic and an unexpected but helpful extension. Before you start this essay, I would like to clarify something– This is merely an attempt to answer a question of importance to me. Ever since I started writing and reading crime thrillers, I’ve always heard an occasional comment on how this genre I’ve grown to love is “surely fun” but not considered art or of literary value. It certainly bothered me to hear that because while I want my writing to be fun, I also strive, as every writer I’m sure does, for a level of respect in the reception of my work. While I know that’s not entirely possible, I can only find peace if I try. Writing this research paper has helped me sort out issues within conformity, as I’m sure it’s a prevalent theme among us as human beings. Conformity is human nature, but I’m choosing to aim higher. Why should I be just crime fiction when I can also be literary fiction? I believe it is possible to be both, and this essay proves that.
For Flavia Silva, Paulo Borges, and Clarice Borges.
“Anything can be literature, and anything which is regarded as unalterably literature – Shakespeare, for example – can cease to be literature. Any belief that the study of literature is the study of a stable, well-defined entity, as entomology is the study of insects, can be abandoned as a chimera.”
-Terry Eagleton, What is Literature?
The notion that literary fiction is paradoxical to genre fiction is subjective. Genre fiction involves a writing style targeted to a specific audience focused on plot devices, and literary fiction concerns itself with style and characters over plot; their differences are not enough to disregard the possibility of genre-literary fiction. The distinct genre of crime fiction incorporates elements of criminality into a storyline that uses violence as its inciting incident, with the murder as the driving force of the plot. Literary fiction, on the other hand, is not necessarily plot-driven since it focuses less on the story and more on the descriptive prose used to express a separate type of story, one that emphasizes less on fictionalizing the world, but on further examining it.
Of course, whether crime fiction can also be literary fiction also provides an impartial viewpoint depending on the circumstance of analysis. However, so does every piece of historical literature and even fiction. The validity of art can be biased and emotionally intuitive to preference, which does not necessarily imply that it is not art. First and foremost, it is necessary to understand what literature is before venturing into how the crime thriller can intersect with it. In a section of the book Literary Theory: An Introduction, Terry Eagleton, an English literary theorist, and critic, makes the concept of literature – regardless of its abstractness – more understandable and intelligible. While there have been numerous attempts to define literature, Eagleton states that the idea remains challenging to assess (Eagleton 1). Throughout the history of writing, literature has evolved from its preceding “objective” definitions. That’s because literature is not objective; one cannot say for sure that literature is definable by the fictional or imaginative or “because it uses language in peculiar ways” (Eagleton 2). It is fair to say that literature implements those definitions, but to find one non-partisan claim would be inapplicable.
This claim of subjectivity in literature is followed by what Eagleton believes is a determinant factor in regulating literature. That factor is known as “value-judgments,” which he asserts has to do with how “the so-called ‘literary canon,’ the unquestioned ‘great tradition’ of the ‘national literature,’ has to be recognized as a construct, fashioned by particular people for particular reasons at a certain time” (Eagleton 10). Eagleton’s claims challenge prior objective definitions of literature, and describe it as the ideological reality embedded in recognizing literature. Henceforth, all literary works represent society’s concerns, becoming a construct of what people consider to be valuable. There is also the limitation that only people in a position of power will have a say in these so-called “societal concerns,” only giving value to a specific set of opinions.
To critics’ belief, crime fiction does not entail depth. It is differentiated in value from literary fiction because they believe it does not push boundaries in theme, style, setting, or historical political content. Does that notion pose a problem for crime fiction to encounter literature? No, because crime fiction, if done intentionally, can be literary fiction. But is such a claim valid when the genre of crime fiction itself lacks acclaim in literary and scholarly circles alike? “Why does crime still have such unpardonably low literary status,” is the title of a Guardian article published in 2009 and written by Stuart Evers, a former bookseller and editor, who is now a reviewer. In the article, Evers writes about John Banville’s response to a question at the Harrogate Crime Writing festival about the difference between writing his genre and literary fiction novels. Banville attested that he found himself more cautious when writing his literary work. Does that mean that the words of Banville’s crime alter ego– Benjamin Black – are of less importance? It seems that way, and Evers even goes as far as to write that “it can be both engaging and literate; compelling and well-written. It can be innovative and surprising, but what it can’t be, it seems, is feted in the same way as literary fiction” (The Guardian).
In addition, a professor in the department of English at Rzeszów University seems to attest to the belief of a lack of the literary in crime in her article “Agatha Christie’s Poirot Novels as Fairy Tales: Two Case Studies” by comparing detective fiction with fairy tales. Lucyna Harmon selects two works of Agatha Christie, a detective writer known for her detective novels and short story collections, titled The Mysterious Affair at Styles and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Harmon’s argument is full of holes, considering there are too many generic connections in Harmon’s case studies by using “narratemes,” or story beats, that constitute the fairy tale genre structure to compare it to Christie’s novels. Harmon modifies or reverses a “narrateme” in the construction of the crime novel and, therefore, fails to acknowledge that disparity. This only results in a partial number of “narratemes” applying to the story, which is a stretch in the claim that the Poirot novels “draw on a modified morphology typical of fairy tales” (Harmon 1). The only rational explanation for Harmon’s attribution of crime fiction to fairy tales is the predictive notion that she thinks there is nothing literary about them. While she doesn’t state any of that, the mere intention to compare a fairy tale to a different genre is enough to indicate that bias. That attribution would not have occurred if it were a work of literature because of its high-quality value. In contrast, fairy tales and detective fiction have a commonality in their value to entertainment, not in their artistic accomplishments.
However, in “Criminal Readings: The Transformative and Instructive Power of Crime Fiction,” Elena Avanzas Álvarez, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Oviedo, Spain, researches crime fiction from a gender perspective, argues that there is more to the genre than mere entertainment. She states that “despite this general belief, crime fiction offers a complex and very accurate portrayal of the society it is produced in, with each text becoming an exercise on reflection and morality” (Álvarez 140). Patricia Cornwell’s 1990 novel Postmortem, Álvarez cites, is an example of the importance of crime fiction to the general public. As previously inferred by Terry Eagleton, it’s essential to note that the general public’s opinion, or rather the concerns of society, plays a significant role in the attribution of literature (Eagleton 10). To further elaborate, Cornwell’s 1990 novel was the stepping stone to the so-called “explosion of forensic science” in fiction (Álvarez 145), leading to more fictional works involving the forensic process and medical students’ enchantment with a forensic profession due to an admiration towards the narrative portrayal (Álvarez 143).
The portrayal of a topic – in Postmortem’s case, the introduction of forensic science to a fictional narrative which thus impacts creativity and reality – offers a worthy intersection of literary and crime fiction. Literary fiction provides an “accurate portrayal of society,” just as crime fiction involves the same. However, although crime fiction offers a complex way to look into society, its form differs from literary fiction. Crime fiction novels such as Postmortem show accurate representation of content (forensic science) within the real world, whereas literary fiction dives deep into the content, psychology and the human condition.
In “The Simple Art of Murder,” Raymond Chandler, an American detective fiction writer, writes an opening statement that best highlights the common characteristic between literary and crime fiction, for it states, “Fiction in any form has always intended to be realistic” (Chandler 1). This subtle statement is enough to acknowledge that regardless of “value judgments” or societal concerns, both modes of writing are similar because of their intentions. Chandler’s main critique of the detective story involves a lack of realistic characters and plot and an inability to move past formulas. Chandler’s critical essay dissects A.A. Milne’s The Red House Mystery to reveal unrealistic holes in the story. But it also regards Dashiell Hammett, an American author of detective fiction, as a writer whose work adheres to reality and uses murder for lifelike reasons and “not just to provide a corpse” (Chandler 6). Chandler’s point is that there are detective writers who choose to stay confined to artificial patterns and those who break away free. Therefore, such an intersection of crime fiction and literary fiction is attainable if done right.
Neal Wyatt and Joyce G. Sarricks’s The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction serves as a frame of reference to identify how crime fiction and literary fiction can become one. The co-authors state in their book that “Many authors focus on the world in which the mystery is set and fill it with provocative examinations of social issues and cultural concerns “within their narrative” (Wyatt et al. 53). Other crime writers “focus on the intricacies of the puzzle itself,” where the point of the novel is to “solve the crime by spotting, following, and weighing each clue” (Wyatt et al. 53). Finally, there is also a set of stories that focus on suspense and intrigue with threatening and interesting characterization or high stakes (Wyatt et al. 53). With that in mind and precise observation of literary fiction, there is a way to identify how these specific styles can become literary fiction. Considering literary fiction “focuses on style, language, and character” and asks “its readers to pay attention to the way it is constructed; and it approaches its subject, regardless of the tone it sets, with serious intent” (Wyatt et al. 74) the focus on social issues and cultural concerns in the mystery novel best aligns with literary fiction. However, this does not mean that other narratives cannot implement literary fiction; instead, when crime fiction focuses on issues in the world, it is easier to implement literary prose, style, language, and character. On the other hand, when there is an emphasis on plot and suspense, that implementation may falter.
Crime and Punishment, for example, written by Fyodor Dostoevsky, is often cited as an outstanding achievement in world literature. The story of Dostoevsky’s novel, at its core, is crime fiction, for it is about an impoverished former law student who kills a pawnbroker and finds himself confused, paranoid, and disgusted with his actions. There is an overlying theme of morality and mental anguish and an extreme focus on the main character, Raskolnikov, and his psychological state. Furthermore, the leading investigator of the pawnbroker’s case, Porfiry Petrovich, torments Raskolnikov giving the impression that the existing formulaic “cat and mouse game” between killer and detective is at play in this particular novel. However, in Crime and Punishment, the supposed game is one-sided and thus an effect of Raskolnikov’s mental anguish. The story also makes a social critique regarding alienation from society, and nihilism, in Russia during the 50s and 60s. Nihilism, which involves the rejection of community and family in favor of materialism, is evident throughout the book. Raskolnikov mistreats friends and family members alike; for the most part, he’s unemotional and disregards social conventions. Henceforth, Dostoyevsky does a phenomenal job blending literary fiction with crime fiction in his novel Crime and Punishment. The build-up of the pawnbroker’s homicide brings suspense to Dostoyevsky’s tale. Still, such tension results from the main character’s psychological factor, further expanding to a societal-related concern regarding Russia’s historical momentary present time.
But are there any other crime novels that can be considered literary fiction? Will Norman, a scholar of American literature and culture, seems to have thought so. The essay “Killing the Crime Novel: Martin Amis’s Night Train, Genre and Literary Fiction” discusses the functioning of the novel Night Train as a piece of literature and detective fiction. However, to Norman’s belief, the conditions are Amis’s intent of dismantling the genre of crime writing and reasserting “autonomy by subsuming its inevitable presence into the higher designs of the literary” (Norman 44). While the story follows a conventional detective narrative – detective Mike Holligan sets out to make sense of Jennifer Rockwell’s suicide by following a potential homicide hunch – Norman notes that the direction the mystery takes in its conclusion outright opposes the structure of the crime genre (Norman 43). Holligan eventually discovers that Jennifer had an affair and was on antidepressant medication, so when Holligan has explored all angles with not a shred of luck or a reasonable suspect, she concludes that the hard to believe suicide of the all-happy gal was indeed legit. The end. “We are invited to consider Jennifer’s suicide allegorically in terms of literary form,” Norman writes. “An act of resistance to the restrictive tyranny of the detective form with its demands for logical solutions and other conventions” (Norman 43).
Holligan would have found an eye-opening clue and nailed Jennifer’s killer if Night Train were to follow the detective form. However, the ending of Night Train, as opposed to that convention, is more realistic, which is why it is literary fiction. Martin Amis has a much more prominent relationship with literature than genre writing because he writes literary fiction. He’s not necessarily fond of the typical crime thriller–Amis has even come to complain that the public doesn’t want to read literary prose due to a preference for a more “chummy and interactive” style, which he does not prefer (Norman 44). Night Train does not become a literary work only because of its realistic factor but also for its evaluation and assessment of the problems with the detective genre.
When historically comparing and contrasting literature and crime fiction, two pioneers of both modes of writing can serve as references. For literature, Charles Dickens, an English writer and social critic known for creating some of the best-known fictional characters, was regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. For crime fiction, Arthur Conan Doyle, a British writer who created the Sherlock Holmes stories, which was a milestone in the field of detective fiction. Which begs the question, why is Dickens’s writing considered literature and Arthur Conan Doyle’s not? Value judgments. In “Sherlock Holmes: Adventures of an English gentleman 1887-1894,” a section of the book Gender, Genre and Narrative, the author, Derek Longhurst, argues that concerning crime, Dickens is more solicitous with “the contradictions between the preservation of order and the pervasiveness of fraudulence, hypocrisy, and a double stand of morality within Victorian society” (Longhurst 51). Doyle, instead, “consciously decentres the lurid details of acts of criminality in the interest of fictionalizing the processes through which crime is detected, resolved and even, in some cases, prevented” (Longhurst 52).
As previously mentioned, Dickens has a notoriety for creating memorable characters – an essential trait in the “value-judgements” of literature. His interest in criminality is also more in line with “morality in Victorian society,” which invites a more psychological approach to the nature of the crime. This psychological approach is an aspect that secures public/society interest in a way Doyle’s fictionalization of the detection of murder can’t. The line of demarcation within both genres goes back to Eagleton’s forwarding of a daily newspaper advertisement: “Times change, values don’t” (Eagleton 9). And at the present moment, literature is about reality, a societal concern, and a distinct style. So if crime fiction is also literary fiction, it must adhere to those “values” in some way, shape, or form.
In conclusion, crime fiction can be literary fiction, and Night Train and Crime and Punishment prove such a claim even though scholars such as Lucyna Harmon may unintentionally argue otherwise. Neal Wyatt and Joyce G. Sarricks’s The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction lays out a foundation for encountering a common ground between genre and literature, and Elena Avanzas Álvarez’s “Criminal Readings: The Transformative and Instructive Power of Crime Fiction” coupled with Raymond Chandler’s critical essay “The Simple Art of Murder,” and Derek Longhurst’s “Sherlock Holmes: Adventures of an English gentleman 1887-1894,” put into context the portrayal of reality through fiction, the dissection of the detective genre, and the historical dynamics between literature and detective fiction. “Some texts are born literary, some achieve literariness, and some have literariness thrust upon them,” (Eagleton 7). Eagleton’s statement produces an understanding of intent and possibility; it could be that “if they decide that you are literature then it seems that you are” (Eagleton 8), but it could also be that a fictional work finds its literariness along the way.
Literary Crime Fiction Recommendations:
- Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
- Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
- Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
- In the Woods by Tana French
- If He Hollers Let Him Go by Chester Himes
- The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Works Cited
Alvarez, Elena Avanzas. “Criminal Readings: The Transformative and
Instructive Power of Crime Fiction.” Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, vol. 42, no. 3, Dec. 2019, p. 140. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.proxy.emerson.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsglr&AN=edsglr.A643530457&site=eds-live.
Chandler, Raymond. “Raymond Chandler, ‘The Simple Art of Murder’(1950).” English 147 Mystery Fiction, 2018, https://mysteryfictions.web.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/17139/2018/08/Chandler-Simple-Art-of-Murder.pdf.
“Contributors – Elena Avanzas Alvarez” Los Angeles Review of Books, https://lareviewofbooks.org/contributor/elena-avanzas-alvarez/. Accessed 06 April 2022.
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. Vintage Classics, 1993.
“Dr Will Norman.” School of English – University of Kent, https://www.kent.ac.uk/english/people/101/norman-will. Accessed 06 April 2022.
Eagleton, Terry. “Introduction: What is Literature?” Literary Theory: An Introduction, Blackwell, 1996, pp. 1–14.
Evers, Stuart. “Why does crime still have such unpardonably low literary status?” The Guardian, 28 Jul. 2009, https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/jul/28/crime-low-literary-status. Accessed 06 April 2022.
Gender, Genre and Narrative Pleasure, edited by Derek Longhurst, Taylor & Francis Group, 2012. ProQuestEbookCentral, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/emerson/detail.action?docID=1016160.
Harmon, Lucyna. “Agatha Christie’s Poirot Novels as Fairy Tales: Two Case Studies.” Literator: Journal of Literary Criticism, Comparative Linguistics and Literary Studies, vol. 42, no. 1, Jan. 2021. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.4102/lit.v42i1.1756.
“Killing the Crime Novel: Martin Amis’s Night Train, Genre and Literary Fiction.” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 35, no. 1, Sept. 2011, p. 37. EBSCOhost, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsgac&AN=edsgac.A277435753&site=eds-live.
“Lucyna Harmon – ResearchGate.” ResearchGate, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lucyna-Harmon. Accessed 06 April 2022.
“Nihilism.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 4 Apr. 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism.
“Raymond Chandler.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 27 Feb. 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Chandler.
“Terry Eagleton.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 10 Feb. 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Eagleton.
Wyatt, Neal, and Joyce G. Saricks. The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Genre
Fiction. [Electronic Resource]. Third edition., ALA Editions, 2019.EBSCOhost, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=cat05467a&AN=ecl.2662051&site=eds-live.