Is it ever appropriate for a writer to use gimmicks? Is an attention-grabbing opening line, a nail-biting cliff-hanger, or an ultra-graphic murder always a diversion from a weak plot or poor character development?
I have read countless novels that relied heavily on gimmicks, novels written by lesser authors who needed the bells and whistles to keep their attention-deficit 21st century readers engaged, authors who lacked the skill to execute Hemingway’s stark prose or Tolkien’s long-winded self-importance. The impetus for this particular discussion, the product of years of head-shaking at the tacky literary gimmicks that permeate modern literature, is my recent completion of Thomas Harris’s Hannibal, the sequel to The Silence of the Lambs. The film adaptation of the latter was forced upon me by my man-friend, and, although I spent much of the film’s gory climax huddling under the covers with my ears plugged, I found myself unwittingly intrigued by whatever plot points I could glean during my unplugged moments, and decided to read the next novel in the tetralogy.
Horror, suspense, and murder mysteries not being my preference, I remain open to any genre of fiction, with the simple provision being that the author exhibits competence. I have no doubt that Harris is a competent author, but, so utterly disgusted was I by Hannibal, I’m reluctant to even bother with any of his other works.
The film The Silence of the Lambs can thank the memorably disturbing character of Hannibal Lecter for its critical acclaim and its unshakeable status as one of the best films ever to be made. The character himself is indisputably a marvelous and impenetrable villain. I wish that Harris hadn’t castrated, cheapened, and made a mockery out of his own creation by writing Hannibal eight years after Sir Anthony Hopkins portrayed Dr. Lecter with such chilling profundity. In Hannibal, Dr. Lecter is lost beneath the sea of corny, diabolic villain stereotypes and the ridiculous gimmicks of the “evil psychopath with traumatic childhood experiences” archetype. Even the grotesque murders he commits fail to impress after awhile.
It wasn’t exactly the gruesome violence depicted with distasteful glee throughout the hundreds of pages of Hannibal that I found repugnant. It was the unsettling feeling that Harris was utilizing shock value to maintain his reader’s interest. I don’t like to be manipulated, whether it be in a literary or a literal context.
The conclusion struck me as particularly vulgar in its attempt at shocking the reader. After rescuing Agent Clarice Starling like some perversion of a knight in shining armor, Dr. Lecter smuggles her away to his Lavish Mansion of Crazy (complete with bronze statuettes, candelabras, and roaring fireplaces) and manages to completely overhaul her consciousness, transforming her into his concubine. Not only did I find this offensively misogynistic (and, please, do not mistake that for a knee-jerk feminist reaction), I felt that it was a complete non sequitur. Nothing about this supposed “conclusion” was remotely consistent with Starling’s character, nor did it strike me as being all that consistent with Dr. Lecter’s character either.
Did Harris want Starling to be a bad-ass FBI agent who takes care of herself and deals with her obvious Daddy issues like a boss? Or did he want her to be a vulnerable, needy woman who tries to mask her feelings of inadequacy by attempting to hang with the boys? Or did he want her to be something nuanced, something in between? Ever the optimist, I wanted to believe that Harris’s vision of Starling was subtle, interesting, and unexpected. As it turned out, she was just another damsel in distress who knew how to shoot a gun.
And Dr. Lecter, that fantastic fictional creation who made Academy Awards rain and quotable allusions to fava beans and Chianti endure: what was Harris’s intention with him? Was his utter lack of humanity, the fact that he could eat a nurse’s tongue out of her mouth without his heart rate increasing one beat, a manifestation of his own childhood trauma? Could the fact that he watched his younger sister get eaten by Nazi deserters when he was a child account for all of his monstrous qualities as an adult? Does he want us to sympathize with Dr. Lecter, or does he want us to lust for his demise? Harris’s exploration of Dr. Lecter’s psyche was lazy and piecemeal in Hannibal, a wasted opportunity to flesh out the complexities of a character who is more and less than a man. He half-heartedly encouraged us to root for him, then turned us against him (but not really, because, after all, he did mutilate a pedophile…how bad can he be?), then made us roll our eyes at him as he transformed into some lame parody of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, pacing around a Gothic mansion and seducing a helpless woman with his macabre charms. I can only hope that Harris attempted to redeem himself in his development of this intriguing character in Hannibal Rising, the next book in the tetralogy. Dr. Lecter deserves much better.
The gimmicks in Hannibal, instead of drawing the reader in and holding his attention, distracted from what is truly competent about the author’s writing: his prose, his understanding of suspense, and the adept research that gave the novel depth. Instead of respecting his readers’ intelligence by taking a more difficult approach, Harris chose to make all of Lecter’s victims either greedy (Pazzi, the crooked Italian cop), scummy (Paul Krendler, the crooked Department of Justice official), good-for-nothing (the gypsy, the Sardinians, the Italian pornographer), or just plain deplorable (Mason Verger, the filthy rich pedophile). I find this to be a lazy gimmick that many horror writers seem to use. So bad things don’t happen to good people in fiction? Or are you just trying to make the reader tread between fearing your villain and wanting to see him triumph?
The funny thing is, fellow authors, you can create complexity in a character without resorting to gimmicks like tired archetypes and shocking murder scenes. You just have to take the time to explore the character. Had Harris spent more time exploring the admirable villain he created in Lecter than he did on setting up the feasting-on-Paul-Krendler’s-brains-out-of-his still-living-body scene, the reader might have come away with a truly memorable character worthy of the notoriety earned by Hopkins’ portrayal in the films. Instead, I’m left with a bad taste in my mouth.
Who’s ready for lunch?
