the left room

“(Violence) corrupts people because if they see it they get used to it and, sadly, they expect it.”

Ruth Rendell talks about TV violence here

Here’s the thing: as a crime writer, if you’ve got anything about you at all, you think about the relationship between fictional violence and real world violence.

You might think about it quite a lot (as I do – it’s pathetic, honestly), or you might have thought about it once – twice even – and worked out very quickly where you stand on the issue. You might have split the argument up and considered the issue of violence against women – to pluck a media-friendly star from the void – and then looked at the apparent gender of the name written down the spine to decide whether the author must have been being visceral for entertainment or out of a deep sense of empathy with the victims. And so, tediously, on. Christ! I nearly forgot. You might even have looked beyond the field to deal with other forms of art. Music, for example, or film.

Whatever – you’ve thought about it in some capacity or other. You’re writing and reading (or hearing, or watching) violence, after all, and violence is horrible. What justifies you in enjoying fake suffering that’s all too real for all too many? While you read about someone being crucified by a serial killer, after all, someone really is being.

1. Violence as Social Commentary

Except, for the most part, obviously people aren’t being crucified by serial killers. This is the first thing to note, even though it’s unfortunate and slightly embarrassing to need to. The crime genre goes through loops, and the serial killer sub-genre did very well after The Silence of the Lambs, bolstered by a big border-crossing from disenfranchised horror folk needing new shelves to live in. But in the era of The Wire and the crime-is-good-because-it’s-social-commentary arguments, it seems like many crime authors are leaping aboard a bandwagon ill-fitted to them.

Q: “Your book is about a child abused at a carnival who then goes on to murder people in the style of fairground rides while dressed as a clown. Why is it so violent?”

A: “Well … real-life violence is so horrible, and I felt a duty to real-life victims to represent that realistically…”

Sorry, but no. Just no. Your novel blatantly isn’t social commentary. You have a killer clown in it. That’s the first clue, okay? You’re not Dostoyevsky – we can all see that.

And people who don’t write about killer clowns: I’m sorry, but you’re probably not off the hook on this one. “Drugs lead to crime” and “Poverty leads to crime” might be social commentary in the most vague and ball-numbingly useless sense, but – brace yourselves – you’re most likely not saying anything important enough to justify any violence you’ve included on the journey. “Violence is bad”. Yeah, I knew that already. You know it too. And we both know you’re not including it to teach me anything, because that would be patronising. I know bad guys have reasons. I know they’re not ‘born bad’ in a Biblical sense, because that’s just fucking dumb.

This, incidentally, is one of the more interesting things about the crime genre, especially in terms of single books. At heart, it’s a very conservative narrative form. Evil occurs; evil is punished. Good guys and bad guys. And yet an intelligent (dare I say liberal) view of the world demands shades of grey, and levels of understanding, that don’t fit that form. We want the bad guy to explode in pain at the end, not get understanding, a suspended sentence and rehabilitation into the community. It’s a fundamental problem for the genre in terms of ‘satisfying narrative’ versus ‘social commentary’. Good And Evil as narrative necessities don’t fit a well-adjusted adult’s view of the real world.

But I digress. The thing is, you don’t need to justify fictional violence at all – any more than you need to justify a character’s hair colour – unless fictional violence has a negative effect on the real world.

2. Does fictional violence have a negative effect on the real world?

No.

I say that with the confidence of a young man not required to prove a negative – that an effect doesn’t exist. If there are studies that show watching, reading or listening to violent art makes people more violent, then present them. (Seriously – do. Comments are open). But I’ve not seen any. Some do seem to show a temporary effect in terms of increased aggression (not crime), but, overall, a causal link has not been established.

This, if we’re honest, is what you’d expect. And by that I literally mean you. You. Right there. Because, most likely, you’ve seen violent films, listened to violent music, read violent books, whatever, and yet – miraculously – have never felt in any major danger of offending as a result. Much as you don’t need books to tell you violence is bad, a book telling you violence is good is equally inconsequential.

You find this at the base of most of these arguments.

For example, this is something you will never hear anyone say:

“I can’t listen to some Jamaican dancehall music. It’s homophobic, and I’m too susceptible. I’m worried that if I listen to it I’ll be influenced to go out and beat up a gay person.”

Or, for that matter:

“Stop me watching this! Save yourselves!”

No, the argument is always from the other way round. It’s always predicated on the notion of some other – someone more susceptible (and therefore less intelligent and autonomous) than the commentator, and who, crucially, the commentator is already afraid of. Be it hoodies or ethnic minorities or right-wing Nazis, listening to Nick Griffin or Beenie Man, the argument is usually the same: well, you know, I can take it, but other people aren’t as smart as I am, and it will affect them. (Incidentally, the ‘them’ in this case is indistinguishable from the ‘them’ in lots of arguments you despise without thinking about it).

Look. As a general rule of thumb: if you can cope with it without turning into a psycho, chances are pretty much everyone else can too. If a tiny minority can’t, it’s probably not the fault of the music (or whatever); the music is most likely an effect for that minority, rather than a cause. And if it turns out that a majority can’t listen to the music without going apeshit, well … we have bigger fucking problems, don’t we.

Is there a drip-drip effect, though? Are we gradually becoming desensitised?

3. The ‘Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs’

In 2009, two teenagers (Viktor Sayenko and Igor Suprunyuck) were found guilty of the murder of 21 people in June and July of 2007 in Ukraine. Most of the victims were bludgeoned to death, and some were tortured and mutilated before they were killed. The two defendants received life sentences; a third man was sentenced to nine years over connected charges of robbery. The judge in the case summed up the motive of the two killers as “morbid self-affirmation”. According to Wikipedia (yeah, I know, but good enough in this instance):

Detective Bogdan Vlasenko stated: “We think they were doing it as a hobby, to have a collection of memories when they get old.” (more)

I first became aware of them at the end of 2008 when I was finishing up Still Bleeding, which is a novel about online footage of death and murder and the people who are interested in that kind of material. While writing it, I did a certain amount of research on forums dedicated to this footage. None of them are illegal or remotely hard to find, and, due to various social and technological advances, they are horribly full of content: beheadings and executions; accidents caught on camera; crime scene photos; CCTV footage of killings. There is, in fact, pretty much everything you could ever ‘want’ to watch: tens of thousands of images and videos. And thousands of users looking at them, all with different motives for being there and viewing these things.

Some of those clips ended up ‘appearing’ in Still Bleeding. The book is partly about representations of death, in memory and on film, and so I thought about it and figured it was appropriate. There’s a blurred line between fiction and reality here, and I wanted to look at it. Here’s the thing: if you watch one of these videos online, it is real in one sense, but, at the same time, you are not watching an actual event. You’re watching zeroes and ones – data that’s been stored on a camera, translated by software, and recreated as a visual image. Sight is fairly primary, of course – we’re used to seeing things happen – and video is a technological illusion that plays on that.  But, actually, what you’re watching isn’t real at all. It’s no different from a person seeing something and describing it to you very vividly in words.

So: some ‘real’ footage of death appears in Still Bleeding – but as words describing it for your head, rather than zeroes and ones describing it for your flash-player. The point is that the reader, ultimately, isn’t too far removed from the characters in the book who are watching those clips, and perhaps no reader of crime fiction is. Like the people on those websites, they may be doing so for different reasons – to challenge themselves; to think about violence; for simple entertainment – but they’re still interested enough, in some capacity, to be there, experiencing that kind of thing. Do you want to see? is one of the ideas in the book. And, if so, why?

Okay.

One of the most infamous aspects of the Dnepropetrovsk murders was that two of the murders were recorded on a mobile-phone camera. Late in 2008, one of those films was shown in court and leaked on the internet. It’s about nine minutes long, and shows the torture and murder of a man at a rubbish tip, using a hammer and screwdriver. The translation of the audio is as follows, as stolen from a site I’m not going to link to. (Feel free to skip, obviously).

“Hold on, hold on. Be neater, fuck!”
Laughing
“Hold on, hold on, hold on, don’t hit him, don’t hit him. Watch him…” The rest of the sentence is indistinct, but he’s likely telling the guy to watch the blood as he’s zooming in.
The following audio is unclear.
[After the screwdriver stabbing]
“What? With what?” The cameraman responding to the boy who stabs the victim.
“What, he’s still alive?” says the guy stabbing the victim.
“He’s still moving his arms after I ripped up his intestines,” the cameraman says.
“He’s having a fucked up day.” The boy stands on the man’s stomach.
More muffled talk as he proceeds to stab him in the eyes with the screwdriver.
“Get over here fast. Kill him already.”
“What?”
“Kill him already.”
“I already put the hammer back. He’s already dead.”
“I poked out his eyes and he’s still not dead,” says the cameraman.
“Get the knife.”
Proceeds to bludgeon him with hammer then interrupts by saying something indistinct.
“More, more.”
“Hold on, hold on.”
They start walking back to the car.
More muffled talk from the blond killer.
“Wash your hands,” the cameraman says. He tells him to spray cleaning chemical on the hammer.
“I’ll hold it.”
Muffled talk from the guy washing the hammer.
More muffled talk from the guy washing his face and walking back from his car.
“I stuck the screwdriver in his brain” says the camera man.
Muffled talk from the guy washing his hands.
“I got him in the nose from his eye.”
“I don’t understand how he was alive? I felt his brain.”
“I was holding the screw driver like this…”
“Alright, let’s get a picture.”

I have seen that video. This article by Caitlin Moran sums up my reaction to the clip, and to others like it. I relate to feeling “very very high – in a bad way”. On a well-known site dedicated to this sort of material, one seasoned user referred to his blood-pressure shooting through the roof. Certain clips, amongst the thousands, become infamous and get nicknames, and this clip is one.

There is a vague point to all this, and it’s not to bum you out. Chances are, if you read that transcript, you thought: fucking hell, I can’t even imagine seeing that on film. And you’re quite right. It is horrific and vile, and every bit as awful as you imagine from the description. And that is kind of my point.

Here’s what I think. The idea of becoming desensitised to violence through art, whether that be film, writing or whatever, is bullshit. Or rather, it’s true  - but only in an absolutely trivial sense. I mean, it’s obvious that by watching ‘violence you know is fake’ you become desensitised to ‘violence you know is fake’, but that doesn’t matter at all. Who cares about that? The leap to the real world is what matters. And yet, as far as I can tell, you could watch as many people die in Hollywood films as you wanted – and you probably have watched a few – but something like the Dnepropetrovsk video will still make you go white. It’s entirely different. Because you’re normal, and because it’s real.

I don’t recommend you watch it to prove this to yourself. You don’t have to. Instead, think of all those slickly choreographed movie fistfights you’ve appreciated, and then contrast them with a real, messy, violent one you’ve seen in real life outside a bar. It’s not remotely the same. It’s not in the same ballpark. Real violence is hideous, ugly and not remotely glamorous or exciting, except in the most horrible way.

And this ultimately is what I think about the issue. If you can watch that kind of real-life violence, and especially if you can perpetrate it, then it’s not because you’re desensitised to fictional violence. It’s because you’ve become desensitised to real-life people. It’s a matter of empathy.

I’m not saying that, in itself, isn’t a problem. But it doesn’t come from watching, reading or listening to anything. It really doesn’t.

And you know the other reason it’s rubbish? It would be too fucking easy.

Although the ‘blog’ here is intermittent, there will be bits and pieces as time goes on. But, because it had been dead for so long and I hadn’t done much, I hadn’t really been expecting comments with the little I’d done, so I’ve not checked in as much as I should. Unfortunately, for no obvious reason, even previous commenters have been going into moderation, which is why comments might not have appeared straight away. Sorry – service, of some kind, will resume shortly.

“You may look back on your life and accept it as good or evil. But it is far, far harder to admit that you have been completely unimportant; that in the great sum of things all a man’s endless grapplings are no more significant than the scuttlings of a cockroach. The universe is neither friendly nor hostile. It is merely indifferent. This makes me ecstatic. I have reached a nirvana of negativity. I can look futility in the face and still see promise in the stars.”

Sixth Form profundity at best – but still: RIP.

“The public should be invited to reject the politics of fear, that sees life as a perpetual terror of what might happen and a perpetual investigation of what has.”

via Not every adult is a paedophile, a terrorist or a mass murderer | Simon Jenkins | Comment is free | The Guardian.

“But how useful is that profile, really? The police already had Calabro on their list of suspects: if you’re looking for the person who killed and mutilated someone on the roof, you don’t really need a profiler to tell you to check out the dishevelled, mentally ill guy living with his father on the fourth floor.”

from gladwell dot com – dangerous minds.

I saw Chris Carter talk (all too briefly, unfortunately) about serial killers at CrimeFest. He made the observation that it was almost impossible to predict in advance if someone would become a killer, and that analysis of their background was really only useful to explain their actions in hindsight. Not quite the same thing, I know, but it made me think of the article above. For the umpteenth time.

“It is 146 minutes long, which means that I entered the theater in the bloom of youth and emerged with a family of field mice living in my long, white mustache. This is an entirely inappropriate length for what is essentially a home video of gay men playing with giant Barbie dolls.”

Burkas and Birkins by Lindy West – Film – The Stranger, Seattle’s Only Newspaper.

“We cannot feel anger at this man who was detained yesterday, for we no longer know who he is. He may be married. He may be a father. He may have a job. He may be kind and considerate. He may be rotten and deceitful. He may have shoplifted. He may have sold drugs. It does not matter, for we are not interested in him; we are interested in the little boy who terrified us with his malice all those years ago, and we do not want to let that shudder evaporate and lose its power.”

Jon Venables is no longer the guilty boy who killed James Bulger – Telegraph.

Finally added the ‘Press This’ button to my toolbar, which, in theory, allows me to grab stuff from the web that interests me and generate a quick blog post from it. If nothing else, it might mean that the site updates more frequently, and anyone visiting gets at least some insight into what’s on my mind.

Anyway, I figured I’d try it out with this video I found. Ceux qu’on aime is the French title for Cry For Help.

I have no real idea what she’s saying, but it’s nice that she’s saying anything at all.

YouTube – La chronique de Carole S. – Ceux qu’on aime.

No, not the new book – although that is on its way – but my son Zack, who was born on Sunday 21 February, weighing a whopping 8 pounds 9. Currently, he looks sort of like this:

Although, you know, more turbulent and full of cry. Anyway, after a hardcore hospital experience, both he and mum are doing well. And I’m very proud/happy/fucking knackered (delete as applicable).

So there’s been two weeks, more or less, off writing Book Six (The Blue Flower? The Black Flower? Black Flowers? Not sure of my working title yet), but that’s going to start up again soon. And I’m figuring the sleep deprivation can only add an extra pinch of spice to proceedings.

There are also a few other things on the horizon, not least of which is a trip to Germany at the end of April to promote the German version of Cry for Help. That’ll be a week long affair, and I’m looking forward to it, albeit with the understandable reluctance to leave Zack and Lynn. I’ll post more details of that soon.

Aside from that, I know I owe a more interesting blog post to the handful of people still attending here. The room hasn’t been left, honestly; if you listen carefully at the wall, you’ll hear the sound of a baby crying next door, and an exhausted writer smashing his fuzzy head into furniture to keep himself awake.

I’m sorry, in the meantime, for any emails or comments – here or elsewhere – that have gone unanswered, or congratulations that appear to have gone unacknowledged. They’ve all been noted and very, very much appreciated.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been thinking a bit about my writing process. There’s no point, but I have. I get asked about it every now and then. Sometimes by email; other times in interviews. And when I did the interviews in Amsterdam at the end of last year, the question came up a few times: “what’s your writing day like?”

I wish I had a writing day.

I wish I had any process at all, in fact, as it would make things a lot easier (or maybe not; maybe the safety net of a tried-and-trusted schedule is the last thing you need; and these maybes are examples of my overall problem). Whatever, I’m working on my sixth book now, and the fact remains that each one has been written in a different way. I know the first one – The Third Person – was the easiest, but only because I wasn’t published, there was no deadline and I was on my own time. I guess the same problems and difficulties were there, but I can’t remember exactly. I came up with the ending (which would eventually be changed totally after acceptance) while sitting on the back-step of a house that’s now four homes behind me and part of a life so distant it’s uncanny to imagine it was ever mine at all.

Possibly because I’ve never settled on a process, I tend to think the whole idea is bullshit: talismanic and self-deceptive, like the academic I used to know, a Leeds fan, who parked his car in the same spot by Elland Road before every match. Or at least so individual that there’s no point asking. But people are often interested, and I remain no different. I like knowing what other writers do. I keep thinking there might be something I’m missing.

Anyway, there are two things I think I understand. The first, I’ve thought for a while; the second, I’ve just figured out, and although I know it applies to my writing, maybe it applies to everyone else’s too. Neither are all that helpful, but here goes.

The first is about that whole planning/writing business. You often see this discussion: are you a ‘planner’ or are you ‘driving with headlights through the fog’? At one extreme, you have a guy like Jeffery Deaver, who plans his books out meticulously, down to the paragraph level. At the other, you have someone like … I don’t know – someone who just sets off writing and sees where it takes them. My theory is: it doesn’t matter which you do or whether, like most of us, you’re somewhere in between, you’ll end up doing the same proportions of both. Writing involves getting the paragraphs in the correct order; the most extreme planner still spends time doing this. The planner spends time getting the plot right in advance; the extreme writer has to address this further down the … lines (cough). Basically, the same questions are being asked and answered, and each takes the time it takes. I think books emerge for every individual author with – basically – the same amount of each activity, however you tackle it.

(Occasionally, you encounter a writer who claims to plan nothing, sit down and write and not change a word. These people, in my opinion, are vicious liars: one step up from the kid in school who assured me the three utilities problem could be solved and I should try harder. However: even after I knew it was impossible, I still kept trying, and I solved it in a dream once, so the joke’s on him).

The second thing I’ve realised is, like I said, personal to me. And I hate it, but it’s true. I haven’t worked out the exact percentages, because that would be silly, but it goes roughly like this. In the days spent writing a book, 50% will be ‘okay’ days. Not good, not bad. Just plodding along. 10% will be ‘good’ days: that fabled kind where everying feels natural, the words flow and the book comes alive. And 40% will be utterly shit days, where I sit at the computer and nothing happens. There’ll probably be a poor word count, but, regardless, whatever is there will be dreadful. I’ll hate the book. I’ll wonder what I’m doing with my life. I’ll speculate on how, when this one is published, I’ll finally be found out.

Those percentages are rough – in every sense – but more-or-less correct for me. Every book I can remember, the writing can be divided up like that. That’s my actual writing process, no matter how I divvy up the planning, writing and editing. And the unfortunate thing is that I have to go through that 40% of shit days one by one. If I don’t have it today, it’ll still be there tomorrow. Which is why the only piece of writing advice I’ve ever felt confident enough to give is “get your arse on the chair and fucking write something”.

The lack of a universal process makes sense to me. The way I see it, a finished novel – the text in a book – is an instruction manual for understanding a story. The story itself might – shock! horror! – even be an instruction manual for understanding something else: themes; ideas; emotions; a sense of wonder. But whatever, you’ve got so many levels to work out, it makes sense that it takes time and feels difficult. It needs to be figured out. That’s encouraging; it would be weird and unrewarding for everyone if it was any other way. An easy solution – a schedule; a typical writing day; a formula; a process – makes a nonsense of the whole enterprise. Reduces it to data-entry.

Nietzsche said “one must still have chaos inside oneself to give birth to a dancing star”. I like that. And I guess that’s my definition of a writing process – at the keyboard and away from it.