{"id":81472,"date":"2018-07-12T18:08:45","date_gmt":"2018-07-12T07:08:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/?p=81472"},"modified":"2018-07-20T15:18:18","modified_gmt":"2018-07-20T04:18:18","slug":"stephen-orr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2018\/07\/12\/stephen-orr\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Orr: This is What I Suspect"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"StephenThis is What I Suspect:<\/strong>
\nStephen Orr on the Appeal of Crime Writing<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ten year old James Ellroy\u2019s mother was murdered in 1958, her body dumped beside a freeway. No one was ever charged, and James lived with this psychological scar as he grew up. No Pride and Prejudice<\/em><\/a> could\u2019ve helped. But he has attempted to fix things by writing about them.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what crime writers do. They\u2019re the ones, I believe, that are tackling the range of complexities that exist around us. They\u2019re the ones willing to talk about why people murder, abduct and abuse kids, why some boys grow up learning to hate women, abuse them, kill them. None of this is ever easy to write about, or sometimes read about, but it\u2019s necessary.<\/p>\n

For me, In Cold Blood<\/em><\/a> served as an introduction, but then came Ellroy and books like Masha Gessen\u2019s The Brothers<\/em><\/a>. True crime, always of variable quality, because it\u2019s a relatively new genre, trying to do quite ancient things. And is it any wonder these new authors, reinventing what Dickens tried to do with Fagin and his pre-teen crims, are often journalists or psychologists? Or writers brought up in complexity?<\/p>\n

This is what I suspect. That the \u2018literary\u2019 novel was an eighteenth-century invention that worked best solving nineteenth and twentieth century problems. By problems I mean all of the stuff our 1.4 kilogram lump of minced meat can\u2019t deal with: why we bother with politics; why, despite our best attempts, violence is ever-present; why some parents screw up their kids.<\/p>\n

In fact, it\u2019s a really long list. But we\u2019ve struggled with the novel, and still give its practitioners awards and encouragement. Like these stories are somehow good for us, made of marble, hung on walls. But I suspect their dwindling readership has to do with how well they\u2019re representing, finding solutions to our world today. As Jonathan Franzen said: \u2018The actuality is continually outdoing our talents.\u2019<\/p>\n

This is also what I suspect. That we\u2019re motivated by love and fear. In Ellroy\u2019s case, My Dark Places<\/em><\/a> was both. Something I feel, too, when I sit down to write these non-fiction stories. Like twelve-year-old Frank Hawson, minding his parents\u2019 outback hut in October 1840 when a group of Aboriginal men came looking for food. He gave them some, but then they asked for his gun, and he refused, and they speared him.<\/p>\n

This fear, always present. Of violence, on display most Saturday nights in Adelaide\u2019s Hindley Street. Of losing people close to you. Of fate, of the random nature of existence. Tomorrow morning you\u2019ll be driving to work and you\u2019ll glance at the radio for a moment and someone will step out and you\u2019ll hit them and kill them and you\u2019ll be the criminal, and you\u2019ll pay for it for the rest of your life. Maybe this is why we now hide in our homes, obsess about the perfect meal and renovation.<\/p>\n

Maybe it\u2019s modern self-preservation, and maybe this loss of primeval fear, this adrenaline-induced, heart-pumping state that\u2019s kept us alive for hundreds of thousands of years, has been lost, and to replace it we read about it, watch CSI. Maybe we need fear, and maybe this is why this new, complex, surreal, often deranged and difficult genre fills the void. Brings darkness in measured doses, allows us to poke the lion behind the bars with a stick, all the time knowing we\u2019ll be safe.<\/p>\n

This is what I suspect. That we want the truth, not nostalgia. We want to understand.<\/p>\n

The final word goes to Ellroy, the young boy, waiting for his mother to walk through the door. Learning, quicker than most, that \u2018only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight.\u2019<\/p>\n

Stephen Orr\u2019s new book The Fierce Country: True stories<\/em> from Australia\u2019s unsettled heart, 1830 to today<\/em><\/a> (Wakefield Press) is literary true crime that explores Australia\u2019s anxiety about its outer-urban places through true stories of mysteries, murders and disappearances, drawn from 1830 to now.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is What I Suspect: Stephen Orr on the Appeal of Crime Writing Ten year old James Ellroy\u2019s mother was murdered in 1958, her body dumped beside a freeway. No one was ever charged, and James lived with this psychological scar as he grew up. No Pride and Prejudice could\u2019ve helped. But he has attempted to fix things by writing about them. That\u2019s what crime writers do. They\u2019re the ones, I believe, that are tackling the range of complexities that exist around us. They\u2019re the ones willing to talk about why people murder, abduct and abuse kids, why some boys grow up learning to hate women, abuse them, kill them. None of this is ever easy to write about, or sometimes read about, but it\u2019s necessary. For me, In Cold Blood served as an introduction, but then came Ellroy and books like Masha Gessen\u2019s The Brothers. True crime, always of variable quality, because it\u2019s a relatively new genre, trying to do quite ancient things. And is it any wonder these new authors, reinventing what Dickens tried to do with Fagin and his pre-teen crims, are often journalists or psychologists? Or writers brought up in complexity? This is what I suspect….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":81473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[6677],"tags":[1445,2688,5017,9009,6286],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Stephen-Orr-Social.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81472"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81472"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81805,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81472\/revisions\/81805"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}