Curmudgeon's Corner: Terence Butler

Fred Blosser RedDux Ed here: Terence Butler is the acclaimed writer of numerous short stories. Here he elaborates on some of the comments our friend Fred Blosser made about  the fading popularity of some once popular mystery novelists in this age of the internet: Terence Butler Is is possible that since he was writing in the wake of WW2 and during Korea and the buildup to SE Asian conflict, before the explosion of self-aggrandizement and fantasizing unleashed in the 60's, and while there still was a lingering idea of what literary--and real world--heroes had been, that JDM's books just couldn't exist anymore? The worldly and world weary, solidly moral man willing to engage in struggle with a plain old bad guy who is causing problems is seen now as a figure from the "old school". Readers now aren't interested in losing themselves in characters and locations, in back story or theme or cause and effect. They demand that writers get them to the blood and sex or they won't want to keep reading... Young people just aren't interested in the kinds of movie stars that could be seen as Travis either; Newman, Redford, Lee Marvin, George C. Scott etc. Film actors yes, but accomplished actors none the less, who knew the era and the man of that era. Can you picture Matt Damon, DiCaprio, Downey et. al. as a faithful representation of Travis or Archer or even Harry Bosch? I can't. Maybe Damon... But instead of seeing Robert Newton as Long John Silver or Blackbeard we get Johnny Depp doing a take on Keith Richards as a rock and roll pirate. Or we get the one-dimensional Jason Statham as the enigmatic Parker! Et fucking cetera... Books and movies have become bizarre, explosive, weird, nihilistic, random, shocking, spectacular, hypersexual, and above all, typical of whatever everyone else is doing, otherwise this audience which H'wood and publishers have trained to search out what they do will be bored shitless. As you well know because you're one of them, there are lots of good writers following the traditions, updating them, and still getting overlooked. And unfortunately you don't have to be a good writer to get famous and wealthy. Three of my faves come to mind; Sallis, Stroby and Zeltserman. My point is one that you've made many times; that we're saturated with media imagery and most of the audience is not capable of enjoying a good read. I've tried to get young people to read Ch. Williams and Rabe and other Gold Medal guys, and some have, but usually respond by asking me to read Lee Child or Patterson et al as if they were somehow equivalent...sigh.... Just random blabbing, but it's a thing I think about a lot. Maybe the Iraq/Afghan vets who want to write will bring another outlook to bear at some point. Something will revitalize the stuff we love. The Blues will not die, and genre fic is just like the blues in it's forms and permutations. I've been reading Dogen, a Zen master and poet from circa 1225 CE whose poems are as yearningly melancholic as anything Robert Johnson wrote. PS Have you noticed the web trend toward alerting and apologizing to readers for articles perhaps being too long? Poor babies!! Sheeeshh... Happy New Year to all of you! XXOO C&T