Sneering Heroes

I’ve been limping through a book by a NYT bestselling writer for about three months now. Obviously I’m not enthralled, so why am I still reading it? Because I like to be familiar with the various well-known thriller and mystery novelists out there, and that means reading at least one of their works.

There is much to like about this book. The author—I’ll call him “h”—has a breezy, conversational style that makes for a fast, engaging read. On the other hand, his style is so conversational that he frequently skips back and forth between past and present tense—even in the same paragraph—which repeatedly jerks me out of the story and drives me nuts.

But what has really turned me off on this writer is the fact that his hero sneers at everyone around him. The book is told entirely from the hero’s point of view, and no one—not his dead wife, not his mother, not his sister, not his best friend, not his father-in-law—no one is portrayed as an attractive, sympathetic person except for our hero. He sneers at everyone.

I was commenting on this to my Monday night writers group, and Sphinx Ink—who has a far better memory than I do—said, “I remember you complaining about another writer for the same thing.” I said, “I did?”

So I did. That book—by a former romance writer turned thriller writer whom I’ll call “t”—featured a female protagonist who also sneered at all around her. It was a big book with a huge cast, and the only person our heroine portrayed kindly was an eight-year-old kid—and maybe a horse. I mention the horse because there were two dogs and a cat in the story, and they were also portrayed as unpleasant beings.

So what’s going on here? As writers, we’re frequently told to create a “sympathetic” protagonist—someone our readers will “like.” Personally, I don’t like people who sneer at everyone else, but since these writers are on the NYT bestseller list, I’m obviously alone in finding their work offensive.

Another member of our group, Charles Gramlich, who in addition to being a horror and fantasy writer is also a psychologist, said he thought a lot of people actually enjoy seeing other people put down—that this is a big part of the appeal of Reality TV and shows like Candid Camera and Survivor. What do you think?

Real Women Don’t

This is obviously an archetypal male fantasy, because I have read it far too often in books written by male authors and it drives me nuts every time. Picture the scene: A woman takes off her dressing gown and sits in front of a mirror to brush her hair. As she strokes the brush through her beautiful locks, she admires her elegant neck, her pert breasts, her flat stomach. Perhaps at this point our author’s male readers are nodding, the image forming perfectly in their heads. But any readers lacking a Y chromosome are laughing—or screaming. No, no, no, no!

Clumsy, amateur writing, you say? Consider the following scene (set in the 1940s) from the book that put DS on the NYT bestseller list:

“Upstairs in her bedroom, Margaret…pulled off her nightgown and sat in front of her dressing table. She quickly brushed her hair. It was ash blond, streaked by the sun and unfashionably short. But it was comfortable and easy to manage. Besides, she liked the way it framed her face and showed off the long graceful line of her neck.

“She looked at her body in the mirror. She had finally lost the last few stubborn pounds she had gained while pregnant with their first child. The stretch marks had faded and her stomach was tanned a rich brown. Bare midriffs were in that summer, and she liked the way everyone on the North Shore had been surprised by how trim she looked. Only her breasts were different—they were larger, fine with Margaret because she had always been self-conscious about their size. The new bras that summer were stiffer, designed to achieve a high-bossomed effect. Margaret liked them because Peter liked the way they made her look.

“She pulled on a pare of white cotton slacks, a sleeveless blouse, knotted beneath her breasts, and a pair of flat sandals. She looked at her reflection one last time. She was beautiful—she knew [it]…”

Leaving aside the ham-fisted cramming of research about bra types and women’s styles, and the fact that when stretch marks fade they show white against tanned skin (even after twenty years), the above image is just plain silly. Now, DS’s wife is on television, so maybe she does look at herself in the mirror and think she’s beautiful. But I doubt it. Every woman I know—even the young, gorgeous ones—looks in the mirror and examines her faults. Her nose is too big. She needs cheek implants. Her breasts are too small. Her thighs are too big. Etc, etc, etc.

Oh--and no woman takes off her clothes to brush her hair. Those bristles hurt when they hit naked flesh.

This is an example of writers seriously failing to accurately portray characters of the opposite gender. Tomorrow’s blog entry will be Real Men Don’t…