February 29–March 7, 1996

open book

Hop On The Bus, Gus

Forget LitFic and check out this thriller-on-a-schoolbus.

By Jim Gladstone

Among those bookworms among whom worm is the more pertinent syllable, one often hears the statement, "I don't read genre fiction, I only read Literary Fiction."

O wormlike ones, I bid thee crawl under a rock.

Or better yet, crawl Under The Beetle's Cellar.

Under The Beetle's Cellar by Mary Willis Walker (Doubleday, $22.50, henceforth referred to as UTBC) is a simultaneously rip-snorting and psychologically subtle novel with a terrifyingly two-pronged central premise. Prong One: A schoolbus full of children is taken hostage. Prong Two: The culprits are members of a Waco-like religious group who sincerely believe they are doing God's will through their kidnapping.

Not only is UTBC one of the most compelling, uniquely American-voiced novels I've read so far this year; it is also one of several thousand books that will be published this year only to be ignored by self-proclaimed Serious Readers because they are marketed as genre books (in this case Mystery, in others Romance, Science Fiction, Horror, Western, etc.) rather than less-peggable "Literary" novels.

To be sure, the genre categories are bloated with formulaic, by-the-numbers titles, but there are always intense, meaningful, intelligent works of prose among them. Genre and junk are hardly inherent synonyms.

In the reasonable hope of turning a profit, publishers are perhaps a bit too quick to brand a book as belonging to a too-specific genre, which, they know, has a reliable fan base that gobbles up most everything published in its category of choice. Industry research shows that arduous Mystery and Romance fanciers often gobble up two to three novels a week.

Who can blame publishers for trying to slap such sellable labels on their books?

The problem — perhaps a minor one, however, because its main victims are snobs — is that self-proclaimed Serious Readers take labels as seriously as literature and shun genres like ignorant children fleeing the Down's Syndrome kids in an elementary school.

The fact of the matter is, among books published in the less clearly labeled and clearly less-read category of Literary Fiction, there is just as much bad stuff as there is in the genres. After all, as frequently as novels transcend labels, novels don't cohere enough to merit a label. Bad Literary fiction is less focused and less tightly written than even bad genre pieces.

Even the complaint that genre novels are formulaic and predictable holds little water. After all, the bildungsroman, epistolary novel and multi-generational saga — all generally lumped into the Literary Fiction category — certainly have formulas of their own. In both genre and LitFic, there is good formula and bad formula. We shouldn't equate formula with cheapness. Think about it: Dirty limericks are formulaic, but so are haiku.

In Under The Beetle's Cellar , Mary Willis Walker seems to call out for readers to take her work seriously. The book's title is an allusion to an Emily Dickinson verse that ends up providing an important narrative thrust toward the thriller's truly thrilling denouement. Even those blue-collar characters in the novel seem to strain against their mass market identities; the schoolbus driver belongs to a literary reading group, tabloid crime reporter Molly Cates — the tale's heroine — boasts the brain and heart of Harper's rather than the pulpy entrails of the Enquirer.

Clearly, Walker offers pleasures for readers beyond the stereotypical formula-guzzling genre audience. Her next novel will surely be heralded as her "crossover" success, splashing onto national bestseller lists, which tend to mix the generic pre-fab and the singularly fabulous.

It's a shame that the marketplace's kiss of approval is what's required to bring writers like Mary Willis Walker to the public eye on a truly grand scale. Genuinely Serious Readers owe it to themselves and to the struggling community of writers to break down the barriers of bookstore sections in their minds. Browse thoroughly, read a page here and there. Leave labeling to the marketeers and let your own curiosity be your guide. And remember, there is no shame in reading whatever it is that pleases you.

Forget snobbery and get searching through those categories you've always ignored. Leave no stone unturned. Beneath some rock, you may find a Beetle's Cellar.

Exactly what makes a sub-genre? I was set to wondering when, by complete coincidence, I received a copy of Jeffery Deaver's new novel, A Maiden's Grave. Like Walker's Beetle's Cellar, Deaver's book is a taut, emotionally wrenching suspenser of quite some literary merit. It is also, like Walker's book, about a schoolbus and its passengers taken hostage by criminals.

Given their superficially similar subject matter, the two novels read extremely differently, Cellar focusing on the interior psyches of all its characters and Grave providing a complexly detailed, meticulously researched look at the dynamics, politics and strategies of hostage negotiation. Author Deaver knows exactly which readers his pinpoint-specific detailing will most immediately appeal to and ironically makes note of it as one character makes strategic suggestions to the head of the hostage rescue team:

"Don't you read Tom Clancy? There's all sorts of bugs and transponders you can use."

Deaver's hostages are not ordinary schoolchildren; they are staff and pupils from a school for the deaf, which raises a score of additional communication problems for the negotiators.

Perhaps some day, these two novels, along with the script for that old Dirty Harry screenplay with the busjacked schoolkids, will be bound together in one sub-genre defining volume.

It can be promoted as an omnibus edition.

The whole concept of genre has been absolutely glorified in the world of film. As with true bibliophiles, the rules for genuinely Serious Filmgoers are to ignore genre rules: there are artistically brilliant Action Films, Comedies, Horror Flicks, etc. One must seek out the best rather than rely on art house programmers.

Nonetheless, a new book which holds hard-and-fast to film's genre definitions is well worth noting. Hard-Boiled: Great Lines From Classic Noir Films by Peggy Thompson and Saeko Usukawa (Chronicle, $14.95) is a sharp-looking compendium of sharp-edged lingo. I can't imagine any language lover who will be able to resist attempts to work some of these pithy catchphrases into conversation.

A sampling:

"What do you want, Joe, my life history? Here it is in four words: big ideas, small results." — Barbara Stanwyck, Clash by Night.

"Do you look down on all women? Or just the ones you know?" — Gloria Grahame, In A Lonely Place.

"It's a terrible thing to hate your mother. But I didn't always hate her. When I was a child, I only kind of disliked her." — Laurence Harvey, The Manchurian Candidate.

Pull a bookstore job and hoist a copy today.