>
> Message: 12
> Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 11:55:47 -0500
> From: "Chris M" <
cptpipes@hotmail.com>
> Subject: Questions for Domenic Stansberry
>
>
> I'm curious about your having two books published in
such short succession.
> For those of us who read hardboiled and noir fiction
all the time, they're
> drastically different, but I would suspect most
readers would classify them
> under the generic Mystery or Crime Fiction label. If
you don't mind
> answering, how did this whole scenario come
about?
>
How both books came out a the same time was largely a matter
of accident. I wrote "The Confession" a number of years ago,
but my agent couldn't place it. The mss. had been sitting in
my drawer for quite a while, unpublished, and then Charles
Ardai at Hardcase called me out of the blue and asked if I
would consider submitting something for his new line. So I
gave him "The Confession..."
Meantime, I was under contract with St. Martins to write the
first two books in a series set in North Beach. I finished
Chasing the Dragon for them, and they happened to release it
at the same time as "The Confession."
> I'm not a writer like many on this list, but I'm
still curious about your
> approach to the two books. I've often heard writers
say they consider short
> stories or poetry more difficult than novels because
they must worry more
> about every last word in order to make the payoff at
the end work. The
> Confession strikes me as a novel that would fit this
same classification,
> whereas with Chasing the Dragon I wonder if you had
to balance the plot and
> characterization of the current book while also
building a foundation for
> future books in the series. It will be a series,
right?
What people say about short stories is true, in that there is
a lot of compression, but I don't necessarily find them
harder to write. There's a lot of complex architecture in a
novel--and just as much pressure on the language--and it's
also a long project, that requires a great deal of endurance,
and a lot of hours.
But yes, you are definitely right, in that Chasing the Dragon
involved laying foundation for the series, while still trying
to have the book work on its own. My primary consideration
was the latter--as you never know how long a series is going
to last, and the most important thing is to make the book
work on its own.
> And how does Chasing The Dragon fit against your
Noir Manifesto (if at all)?
This is an interesting question, and I suppose it's something
that people who have read Noir Manifesto will sometimes raise
in regards to my fiction--as to whether or not it lives up to
what that essay seems to call for.
At its core, The Noir Manifesto is a statement of aesthetic
sensibility that has informed my work for quite a while, long
before I actually put it down into words, and likely that
aesthetic will continue to do so, particularly in regards to
the underlying vision. As to technical matters, regarding the
crossing of genre lines and the use of genre conventions, I
think there are a lot of ways to operate, and some of the
writers I mentioned in there have done things I admire, some
in a classic noir mode, others in a more experimental
way.
In the North Beach Series, the main character's name is
Dante, and as soon as you have a name like that--well, you
are off in a certain allegorical mode, like it or not, and I
see it as part of my task to deal with those implications in
those books, now that I have got myself into those
waters.
There was a medieval cleric, name of Boccaccio, author of the
Decameron, who who was put to trial for his writing--and
defended his baudy and very secular tales through the
argument that they were meant as negative examples, the close
examination of which showed the audience the temptation of
evil and and how not to behave. In Boccaccio's view, it was
all but impossible to tell a story--even with the devil as
the primary speaker--that did not manifest the presence of
the divine.
Much of literary criticism is built upon this premise, and
the notion that there is innate morality in every
well-constructed tale (and even some of the poorly
constructed ones)..
At present, I have been thinking a lot about this, wondering
if it's true, and that question is kind of in the background
while I am working on these North Beach books...
But my primary concern is to tell a good story, with
interesting characters... And my feeling is that if I do that
well enough, all the other things will work themselves
out...
I try not to let statements of critical aesthetic dictate my
creative work...even if I was the one who made the
statements...
> Thanks again.
>
>
>
>
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 16 Nov 2005 EST