How Do You Know?

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

How do decide whether any story is good? How do you know it?

I'm reading two David Goodis books. I recently stumbled over him while listening to a discussion tween two famous writers. Goodis wasn't famous or popular; one critic says Goodis didn't write stories, he wrote suicide notes. But his writing is GOOD. His wares are far better than the two John O'Hara erotic novels I'm reading, and O'Hara's stature is Olympian.

But O'Hara wrote of Eastern Elites, and Goodis wrote about Philly Skidrow bums. His women aren't beautiful, his men aren't powerful. One critic says Goodis' women would rather cuck their husbands than eat, but they go to war when their cucks are stolen by other girls. The whole crew are wasted alcoholics. Seen from the Moon, I prolly couldn't distinguish O'Hara's alcoholic rich folks from Goodis' bums.

It doesn't explain goodness, though. Why do I prefer Goodis or Chandler or Leonard or George V. Higgins to O'Hara tho all of the first group acknowledge O'Hara as their superior?

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

Ideosyncracies, flaws, strong personal prejudices - even poor English grammar - give me any of that plus a yarn that gets me following along with whoever the protagonist(s) is or are doing or having done to them. If the characters have personality I'm there along with them for the ride. If the story has all the expert elements of some literary college's dictat about what 'the great novel' or what 'good writing' is, I'm literally going to chuck it in the waste basket around the time the 'writer' (for want of a more accurate term!) introduces the character whose family history included some tragedy of usually socio-political breadth, or single working parent, or deprived upbringing yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah goddamn yeah.

Cervantes, for example, for me, is exactly that kind of real writer - whose characters are totally ridiculously flawed and ideosynractic and that's GOOD!

And there are dauntingly clever writers like Arturo Perez-Reverta, who also tell ridiculously unrealistic, but also ridiculously good stories.

And when Dennis Wheatley delivers the sucker punch right up front when his band of merry friends indulge in a SELF-MADE feast of 'Bisque d'Homard' fortified with sherry, a partidge apiece, stuffed with foie-gras, and an iced orange salad laced with creme de menthe...'

And THEN, when they have a glass of 'very old Madeira with smoked cod's roes, with the soup a Marco-brunner Kabinet '33, with the partridge a Chateau Latour '28...'

AND THEN, when they lit up the goddamned HOYO DE MONTERREYS...!

I mean, it's so totally ludicrously silly fanciful stuff, THAT BY GOD I'M WITH RICHARD EATON AND THE DUKE DE RICHLEAU WHEN THEY SET OUT TO FALL INTO THE DEADLY TRAP OF THE WICKED SATANIST.

It's ridiculous silly fanciful stuff - that me and a whole gigantic tribe of other silly guys just totally BELIEVE IN, that's all, of course.

I don't take myself seriously and I don't want to read stuff from people who actually WANT to win Booker Prizes.

Donald E. Westlake was another one of these guys who could tell a yarn through a haze of cigarette smoke and car windows streaked with coffee stains and sweating cops going round and round and round the block - and round the block - looking for a carpark spot they finally get at 2.15 before 'rushing in' in response to a major crime that happened at ten in the morning.

It's the story it's the story. Everything else is showing off, if you've got what it takes for real anyway, that is EXTRA to THE STORY.

I mean I like showing off too - Marion Chesney or Tanith Lee can show off; but then they write the hell of a fine tale too.

Asimov CANNOT show off. But he manages to cobble together stuff worth again, 'getting sucked in to.' I'll follow Asimov all the way around a twisted universe just to find out the hero was a robot, OF COURSE. Silly me! Who couldn't see that coming?!Or that god is/was a robot! In fact, I have done that - followed him up and down rabbit holes and around the universe - many times I seem to recall.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Ideosyncracies, flaws, strong personal prejudices - even poor English grammar - give me any of that plus a yarn that gets me following along with whoever the protagonist(s) is or are doing or having done to them. If the characters have personality I'm there along with them for the ride. If the story has all the expert elements of some literary college's dictat about what 'the great novel' or what 'good writing' is, I'm literally going to chuck it in the waste basket around the time the 'writer' (for want of a more accurate term!) introduces the character whose family history included some tragedy of usually socio-political breadth, or single working parent, or deprived upbringing yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah goddamn yeah.

Cervantes, for example, for me, is exactly that kind of real writer - whose characters are totally ridiculously flawed and ideosynractic and that's GOOD!

And there are dauntingly clever writers like Arturo Perez-Reverta, who also tell ridiculously unrealistic, but also ridiculously good stories.

And when Dennis Wheatley delivers the sucker punch right up front when his band of merry friends indulge in a SELF-MADE feast of 'Bisque d'Homard' fortified with sherry, a partidge apiece, stuffed with foie-gras, and an iced orange salad laced with creme de menthe...'

And THEN, when they have a glass of 'very old Madeira with smoked cod's roes, with the soup a Marco-brunner Kabinet '33, with the partridge a Chateau Latour '28...'

AND THEN, when they lit up the goddamned HOYO DE MONTERREYS...!

I mean, it's so totally ludicrously silly fanciful stuff, THAT BY GOD I'M WITH RICHARD EATON AND THE DUKE DE RICHLEAU WHEN THEY SET OUT TO FALL INTO THE DEADLY TRAP OF THE WICKED SATANIST.

It's ridiculous silly fanciful stuff - that me and a whole gigantic tribe of other silly guys just totally BELIEVE IN, that's all, of course.

I don't take myself seriously and I don't want to read stuff from people who actually WANT to win Booker Prizes.

Donald E. Westlake was another one of these guys who could tell a yarn through a haze of cigarette smoke and car windows streaked with coffee stains and sweating cops going round and round and round the block - and round the block - looking for a carpark spot they finally get at 2.15 before 'rushing in' in response to a major crime that happened at ten in the morning.

It's the story it's the story. Everything else is showing off, if you've got what it takes for real anyway, that is EXTRA to THE STORY.

I mean I like showing off too - Marion Chesney or Tanith Lee can show off; but then they write the hell of a fine tale too.

Asimov CANNOT show off. But he manages to cobble together stuff worth again, 'getting sucked in to.' I'll follow Asimov all the way around a twisted universe just to find out the hero was a robot, OF COURSE. Silly me! Who couldn't see that coming?!Or that god is/was a robot! In fact, I have done that - followed him up and down rabbit holes and around the universe - many times I seem to recall.

Yep. Few can pull off monogrammed linen toilet paper but some do it with elan.