Subtle Humor Imbedded in Literature

Writing funny pieces is a legitimate form of activity, but the durable humor in literature, I suspect, is not the contrived humor of a comedian commenting on the news but the sly and almost imperceptible ingredient that sometimes gets into writing. I think of Jane Austen, a deeply humorous woman. I think of Thoreau, a man of some humor along with his bile.

E.B. White in Writers at Work, Eighth Series, edited by George Plimpton, 1988  

Estimating Time of Death: Reality Versus the Myth

     Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, pathologists and toxicologists have continued to fill forensic science journals with reports of potential new indicators of time of death. Some of the most promising have included a gradual rise in potassium levels in the eye's jellylike vitreous humor and the waning ability of the cadaver's muscles to respond to mild electric shock. Yet every such stopwatch has eventually proved inadequate when applied to actual murder, in all its controlled-experiment-defying depravity.

     Still, the myth of the medical expert's ability to nail down time of death has endured. No doubt this stems in part from the many pathologists who continue to offer more precision in court than their science can rightfully claim. That they do this is understandable enough, given the relentless pressure. "It's a question almost invariably asked by police officers, sometimes with touching faith in the accuracy of the estimate," wrote famed English pathologist Bernard Knight in the 1960s. "It's one of the most common questions I get," echoed Missouri medical examiner Jay Dix forty years later. "I have to tell them--it's impossible." Yet Dix--one of the nation's top pathologists and the author of the 1999 forensic atlas Time of Death, Decomposition, and Identification--sees it done all the time. "I'm continually reviewing cases in which pathologists pinpoint death to within a few hours," he said. "Not that I've ever seen a case where it was appropriate."

Jessica Snyder Sachs, Corpse, 2001

A Murderer's Last Words

Somebody needs to kill my trial attorney.

George Harris, executed in Missouri on September 13, 2000

The Elements of a Compelling, Entertaining Novel

     In true crime, biography, and other types of nonfiction, I prefer the narrative form. In other words, I like nonfiction that reads like a well-plotted novel. In my opinion, writers who have succeeded in this form include Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, and Joseph Wambaugh. In fiction, I like crime writers who know how to plot and tell a good story. In this group I include Jim Thompson, Donald Westlake, Evan Hunter, Lawrence Block and Thomas H. Cook.

     People read out of curiosity and the desire to be told a compelling story. This is probably why critically acclaimed literary novelists, authors who disdain drama and a good story, are not widely read. I don't think they deserve to be.

     A tip to readers: avoid novels that have won literary awards--they almost always stink. And stay away from literary novels bearing glowing cover blurbs from other literary writers. For example, a cover blurb that reads "So funny I laughed out loud" means that novel is totally without humor.

Creative Versus Straight Reportage

Creative nonfiction differs from fiction because it is necessarily and scrupulously accurate. Creative nonfiction differs from traditional reportage because balance is unnecessary and subjectivity is not only permitted but encouraged.

Lee Gutkind, The Art of Creative Nonfiction, 1997

The No-Nothing Industry

Publishing is the only industry I can think of where most of the employees spend most of their time stating with great self-assurance that they don't know how to do their jobs. "I don't know how to sell this," they explain, frowning as though it's your fault. "I don't know how to package this. I don't know what the market is for this book. I don't know how we're going to draw attention to this." In most occupations, people try to hide their incompetence, only in publishing is it flaunted as though it were the chief qualification for the job.

Donald Westlake, author of 100 crime novels, 2008

Good Legal Advice?

     According to Regent University Law Professor James Duane, answering questions asked by the police can never help you. Even if you are innocent, your statements can lead to self-incrimination; anything you might say that would actually help your side can simply be discarded by the authorities.

     Online Paralegal Programs recommend that you respectfully decline to answer questions, even if the encounter is nothing more than a routine traffic stop. They stress that you politely decline to answer questions or permit searches, and ask frequently whether you are free to go.

     Police questions such as, "Have you had anything to drink?" or "Do you know how fast you were going?" are trick questions. Do not answer them.

Robby Soave, The Daily Caller, January 5, 2014 

Policing: Suspects With Knives

Studies have shown that, on average, if you [a police officer] are twenty-one feet away from a suspect armed with a knife, that person can run up and stab you before you can draw your gun, aim, and fire. Even if the suspect is more than twenty-one feet away, he can still throw that knife at you and embed it in your chest. You don't really think about this scenario until you've actually had a knife thrown at you. Then it becomes all you think about.

Adam Plantinga, 400 Things Cops Know, 2014 

The Young Writer

     Though everybody is talented and original, often it does not break through for a long time. People are too scared, too self-conscious, too proud, too shy. They have been taught too many things about construction, plot, unity, mass and coherence…

     Another trouble with writers in the first twenty years is an anxiety to be effective, to impress people. They write pretentiously. It is so hard not to do this. That was my trouble.

     For many years it puzzled me why so many things I wrote were pretentious, high-sounding, and in consequence utterly dull and uninteresting. It was a regular horror to read them again. Of course they did not sell either, not one of them.

Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write, a classic originally published in 1938 

Crime Versus Mainstream Fiction

Most readers come to a mystery novel because the genre promises an actual story, a characteristic that many find lacking in so-called mainstream fiction.

Jeremiah Healy in Writing Mysteries by Sue Grafton, 1992