{"id":182,"date":"2021-09-10T15:40:49","date_gmt":"2021-09-10T19:40:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/researchbdev.wpengine.com\/zorina-khan\/?p=182"},"modified":"2021-10-23T23:30:22","modified_gmt":"2021-10-24T03:30:22","slug":"publish-and-perish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/a-few-of-my-favourite-things\/publish-and-perish\/","title":{"rendered":"Publish and Perish"},"content":{"rendered":"

Montparnasse<\/a>, Paris on a chilly winter afternoon<\/em><\/p>\n

Murder can be elegant, but only if it takes place in foreign lands.\u00a0 The most effective literature in this realm evokes a sense of place that is as central as the narrative or characters. This is the premise that guides my reading of murder mysteries and modern detective novels.\u00a0\u00a0French bookstores, packed with paperback translations of the latest Michael Connelly and Harlan Coben, are adhering to this rule, so I do not entirely fault them. The term roman noir<\/em><\/i>\u00a0is French, but I have yet to discover a French crime novel that is darker than grey, perhaps because French writers are too sensitive to \u201cla tendre indiff\u00e9rence du monde<\/em><\/i>\u201d (\u201cthe tender indifference of the world,\u201d as Camus put it in The Stranger<\/em><\/i>).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I find it difficult to distinguish between bande dessin\u00e9e (BD) and roman graphique, although there is no question that Camus\u2019 Stranger<\/em> in graphical form, drawn by Jacques Ferrandez, is the ultimate graphical crime novel. Bande dessin\u00e9e might be called comics in English, but they have long progressed beyond the petty crimes in TinTin and Milou to Blacksad<\/em>, a noir-ish cat who is a private eye (yes, you read that right) with all the requisite characteristics of le d\u00e9tective de choc<\/em> \u2013 he is sad, solitary and disillusioned. Pierre Taranzano progresses beyond death, in his thought-provoking Les Thanatonautes<\/em> series.<\/p>\n

\"\"Nestor Burma<\/em>, by Jacques Tardi, is a former anarchist, who now foils crimes authentically located in the different districts of Paris. My favourite Tardi is Mic-Mac Moche au Boul’ Mich’<\/em>, not just because of the alliteration, but because I bought a copy in a Parisian BD store on the Boul\u2019 Mich\u2019 at 10 a.m., on a weekday, and had to push my way through the crowd of adults lounging against the bookshelves reading the latest issue. (Note to self<\/em>: check the data on productivity in the French economy.)<\/p>\n

And speaking of exotic places, why did I never think of writing my thesis on the \u201cimperial cultural hegemony of African Francophone Bandes Dessin\u00e9es”<\/a>?\u00a0 The author of\u00a0The Paris Enigma<\/em><\/i> is not a Frenchman, but Pablo de Santis of Argentina. The denouement of this original and entertaining story occurs on the newly-erected Eiffel Tower, where twelve of the world\u2019s greatest detectives convene during the Paris World\u2019s Fair of 1889, to resolve the murder of one of their own group. However, the finest Argentine writers seem incapable of eluding the influence of the masterful Jorge Luis Borges, even in the realm of murder mysteries.<\/p>\n

\"\"It’s a real crime to demolish a stunning building like La Samaritaine<\/em><\/p>\n

What do you get when you add a PhD in Mathematics to a lucid literary style? The answer is Guillermo Mart\u00ednez, whose Oxford Murders<\/em><\/i>\u00a0improbably links references to Heisenberg\u2019s principle and G\u00f6del\u2019s theorem.\u00a0\u00a0Other worthwhile contributors to the genre include Arturo Perez Riverte, Mempo Giardinelli, Ricardo Piglia and Jose Pablo Feinmann.\u00a0The Buenos Aires Quintet<\/em><\/i>\u00a0by Manuel V\u00e1zquez Montalb\u00e1n (from Barcelona) features Pepe Carvalho, who has been described as a \u201cmetaphysical gumshoe;\u201d on a more physical note, Carvalho loves dinner and women, and (even more) dining with loving women.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Montalb\u00e1n was the likely inspiration for Italy\u2019s most popular police commissioner, Salvo Montalbano, but Camilleri\u2019s books would be vastly less appealing if the setting were anywhere else beyond Sicily. The inspector is as flawed and idiosyncratic as that island, and both manage to be attractive and appalling in equal measure\u2014or maybe the balance tips toward appalling. My favourite Italian mystery writer, Umberto Eco, probably appeals to me because he is more akin to the Borges-Argentine school than Camilleri. So it is not surprising that his novel, The Prague Cemetery<\/em><\/i>, hurtled to the top of the bestseller list in Argentina. Eco is a professor of semiotics and this is reflected in his writing; but his erudite, effervescent and illuminating Name of the Rose<\/em><\/i>\u00a0is to the\u00a0Da Vinci Code<\/em><\/i> as Champagne is to a flat Coke.\u00a0\u00a0(Or, as he modestly puts it, his work levies \u201ca tax on idiocy.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Japanese fiction includes a number of wonderful off-beat productions that might be classified in this fiscal-IQ genre, such as Kobe Abe\u2019s Ruined Map<\/em><\/i>\u00a0and Murakami\u2019s\u00a0Wild Sheep Chase<\/em><\/i>. The canon of crime writers in Japan is Seicho Matsumoto, whose Inspector Imanishi projects the tact and courteous deference that typify Japanese interactions even when confronting callous criminals. By way of contrast, as one of my friends in Tokyo points out, Natsuo Kirino is unusual in Japanese society because she is \u201coutspoken and strong-willed.\u201d Even a non-Japanese reader might find Kirino\u2019s Grotesque\u00a0<\/em><\/i>to be unsettling and disturbing. The narrative is related from the point of view of a sociopath, and this excursion across such an alien mental landscape tainted my thoughts for days after.\u00a0\u00a0Fortunately, alienist insights like those of Kirino and Mishima offer round-trip tickets into other worlds, where we are always safely ensconced and moored in our own reality; we can be captivated but not captured.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Scandinavian mystery writers were long a mystery to the American reading public, but no longer, after the Millenium<\/em><\/i>.\u00a0\u00a0Stieg Larsson\u2019s trilogy about the girl with the dragon tattoo hacked away at our aversion to literature in translation. Now every Kindle is loaded with the enthralling, appallingly-noir police procedurals that only a midnight sun can inspire.\u00a0\u00a0Don\u2019t make the mistake of believing that The Laughing Policeman<\/em><\/i>\u00a0by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo is lighthearted fiction.\u00a0\u00a0Kurt Wallander (by Henning Mankell), Erlunder (Arnaldur Indri\u00f0ason of Iceland where, like Madonna, everybody is known by their first name)<\/em><\/i>, and Harry Hole (Jo Nesbo) lead such fractured lives that the murders they investigate appear to be a natural extension of the world they inhabit. Divorced alcoholics past their sell-by date, in uncertain health and equally uncertain unhealthy relationships with estranged offspring and the occasional romantic partner, these characters are nonetheless mesmerizing.<\/p>\n

And, of course, academia is the most hazardous terrain where, according to James Hynes, even the eminently deserving might Publish and Perish<\/em>.\u00a0 If one considers the number of heinous (literary) crimes committed in Oxford, surely the population of Dons must be now on the verge of extinction…<\/p>\n

\"\" \"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Montparnasse, Paris on a chilly winter afternoon Murder can be elegant, but only if it takes place in foreign lands.\u00a0 The most effective literature in this realm evokes a sense of place that is as central as the narrative or characters. This is the premise that guides my reading of murder mysteries and modern detective […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140,"featured_media":833,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[15],"class_list":{"0":"post-182","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-a-few-of-my-favourite-things","8":"tag-literary-musings","9":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}