Tag: writing

Torn between Two Lovers

The other show that Agnes Nixon created was One Life to Live, set in the Philadelphia suburb of Llanview. The show never really got quite the attention that it’s sister shows on ABC did, airing for most of its run between the better known All My Children and General Hospital, and it did veer into the weird from time to time. But when it was on its game,One Life to Live was without question one of the best shows on television.

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I can remember watching from a very early age, with our babysitter and my grandmother. The lead character was–and always remained–Victoria Lord. The show followed the classic soap set-up of two contrasting families–one rich, one poorer–but Agnes Nixon gave that classic set-up a twist. Usually, the families were large–the Hortons on Days of Our Lives being a prime example–and very WASP-y; with names like Hughes and Lowell and Matthews. The “poorer” family wasn’t really poor; it usually was more upper-middle class, with doctors and lawyers; money was never a concern. What Nixon did with One Life to Live was very different than anything else on the air. Of course, there were the Lords, filthy rich with their mansion and publishing empire–but she deliberately made the second family not only working class but ethnic–the Polish-American Woleks.

And even more shocking, one of her initial storylines was about Carla…who turned out to be a light-skinned black woman passing for white, engaged to a white man, and struggling to deal with whether she should embrace who she was or continue living a lie. For the 1960’s, this was shocking–particularly since she was engaged to a white doctor. The big reveal when the audience found out that Carla was actually black was one of the biggest plot twists ever on a daytime drama–and needless to say, didn’t play well in the deep South.

The show always took chances–some of them paid off, others didn’t. The underground city of Eterna story, the time travel story that sent Clint Buchanan back to the 1880’s–these were the things that made one roll one’s eyes.

But like I said, when the show was on, it was fucking on.

Take the character of Tina Clayton, for example. She was originally brought on as the teenaged daughter of Viki’s best friend from college, and a little loose with her morals. She left the show, only to return in the mid 1980’s older, trashier, and with a secret–she was actually Viki’s half-sister, because her mother had had an affair with VIki’s father!

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Now, one of the original big stories on the show was Viki’s mental illness–she had DID (dissociative identity disorder), or what was then called a ‘split personality.’ She would become another woman, Niki Smith. This illness was originally ‘cured’ and Viki moved on. Tina’s return, and the claims about Viki’s father, brought Niki Smith back out yet again. Tina was front and center on the show for several years, superbly played by Andrea Evans, until she left the show. The part was recast a couple of times, but Evans was so definitive it was hard for the other actresses to make the part their own.

But Erika Slezak was fantastic as Viki. She won six Emmys for the part–in no small part because of her stunning performances during the DID episodes, when she was completely believable as someone else.

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She also had amazing chemistry with another amazing actress, Robin Strasser, who played her arch-enemy and stepmother, Dorian Lord.

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The scenes when Dorian finally confronts Viki with the knowledge she’d always thought Viki knew herself–that Victor Lord had sexually abused her as a child–were stunning; they are on Youtube, if you want to take a look. That was when Viki’s mind shattered into several different characters; at least six. Amazing acting and writing.

In the early 1990’s, One Life to Live was absolutely must-watch television, at least for me, as the show took on homophobia and HIV. Viki’s youngest son Joey’s best friend Billy Douglas, played by Ryan Philippe, was thrown out by his parents for being gay.

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At the same time, a local girl named Marty Saybrooke was obsessed with Father Andrew Carpenter, an Episcopalian priest who was trying to help Billy. When Andrew rejected her advances, Marty started telling people that Andrew had actually molested Billy and that was why he was gay. Andrew’s older brother had actually BEEN gay, and died from AIDS without reconciling with their homophobic father. It was riveting to watch, as characters whom I’d watched and loved for years had to struggle with their own homophobia and biases, as well as their fear of AIDS. Watching Sloan Carpenter come to terms with the knowledge that his own fears and biases had cost him his son was powerful, and of course, in the end all was well and the truth came out and Sloan convinced Billy’s parents that loving their son–and not losing him as he had lost his own son–was most important. The storyline wrapped up with a visit to the AIDS Quilt, where the Carpenters added a panel for their lost son.

As a gay man in a homophobic world, you can only imagine how powerful that was to watch. That they actually showed the quilt was one of the most amazing things in the world to me.

But the show wasn’t done quite yet with powerful stories. Next came the gang rape of Marty Saybrooke, at a fraternity party. SPurning the advances of Todd Manning and pretty much loathed and despised by everyone in Llanview as a liar, Marty got drunk at a fraternity party–and Todd, along with two of his buddies, including a cousin of Viki’s–gang raped her in one of the fraternity dorm rooms. The rape was actually shot through an aquarium; so you could see vague movements and blurred violence, but you could hear it happening. It was incredibly horrifying, and extraordinary television and storytelling; because who would believe notorious liar Marty? Especially because she included Viki’s oldest son, Kevin, in her accusation because she was drunk–and later recanted, which threw her entire story into question.

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Susan Haskell won an Emmy for her portrayal of Marty–she would later win another for reprising the role fifteen years later.

And the show created the most terrifying villain of all in ringleader Todd Manning, superbly played by Roger Howarth (who also won an Emmy). The character was so popular they had to somehow find a way to keep him on the show–which meant rehabilitating a rapist (problematic, but that’s a subject for another time). Eventually, Todd turned out to be Viki’s half-brother, product of the continued liaison between her friend Irene and her father.

For those two stories alone–the homophobia and the gang rape–the show should never be forgotten.

It was brave and daring for its time, and incredible storytelling.

And I didn’t even mention Judith Light’s brilliance as housewife hooker Karen Wolek.

S thank you, Agnes Nixon. You were an amazing writer, and a creative genius, and your creations were some of the best television ever.

On the Dark Side

Someone recently pointed out to me that on my website, I described my Chanse MacLeod series as more nourish, but a hilarious typo—which either no one noticed previously or had but were too polite to mention to me— made the sentence read as the Chanse series is more nourish. Yes, it made me laugh for a few moments before I went in and corrected it, but it also made me start thinking about the sentence itself. Is the Chanse series, in fact, more noir than the Scotty series?

 

The Chanse series is darker than the Scotty series, and yes, that was a deliberate choice, but calling the Chanse series noir is probably incorrect; what I should have said was the Chanse series was more hardboiled. That would be factually correct. So, what precisely is the difference between hardboiled and noir?

 

Hardboiled crime fiction is a bit easier to define than noir, and it is possible for a novel or story to be both. Wikipedia says this:

 

Hardboiled (or hard-boiled) fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction (especiallydetective stories). Derived from the romantic tradition which emphasized the emotions of apprehension, awe, horror and terror, hardboiled fiction deviates from that tradition in the detective’s cynical attitude towards those emotions. The attitude is conveyed through the detective’s inner monologue describing to the audience what he is doing and feeling.

The genre’s typical protagonist is a detective who witnesses daily the violence of organized crime that flourished during Prohibition(1920–1933) and its aftermath, while dealing with a legal system that had become as corrupt as the organized crime itself.[1]Rendered cynical by this cycle of violence, the detectives of hardboiled fiction are classic antiheroes. Notable hardboiled detectives include Philip Marlowe, Mike Hammer, Sam Spade, Lew Archer, and The Continental Op.

 

Interesting that Wikipedia doesn’t define it as a subgenre of crime fiction, but defines it as its own genre, separate but sharing characteristics with crime fiction. It also claims that the notion of hardboiled fiction is limited to a specific time period. I don’t think that’s true; I would go so far as to say that there are many authors who are publishing hardboiled crime fiction today. It’s only my opinion, but I do think one could consider Sue Grafton, Sara Paretsky, Ace Atkins, Reed Farrel Coleman, and many others as practitioners of the form.

 

Noir, on the other hand, is a more slippery kind of fish to define. Film noir and literary noir, for example, are completely different things; the classic movie is considered film noir, but the novel itself, to me, is hardboiled; Spade is a cynic but he is not a bad guy. When I was asked to write a story for New Orleans Noir, the assignment, as defined by the editor, was to come up with a description for noir and write a story that fit that definition. My definition was the endless nightmare; for me, noir was about an everyday Joe who makes a bad decision—something amoral or immoral, maybe against the law—and that bad decision sets he/she on a path where things get worse, and the only choices presented from that point on sink the character deeper and deeper into the quagmire of an amoral abyss. To that end, I wrote the story “Annunciation Shotgun”.

I never really felt, though, that my definition was adequate; it scratched the surface, but it didn’t go deep enough to truly define noir. Of course, Laura Lippman defined noir on a panel I was on perfectly: dreamers become schemers. As always, the woman who is often the smartest person in the room nailed it, and I have since stolen that as my definition.

I love noir, both the film and literary versions of it. James M. Cain is one of my favorite writers, and I have always wanted to write a noir novel. I have a couple of ideas, and as always, it’s simply a matter of being able to find the time to sit down and actually write one. I want to read more noir writers; modern day genius Megan Abbott is one of our best writers and her novels are extraordinary. The closest I’ve come to a noir with my novels are Timothy and Dark Tide;

I have a couple of other ideas, as I said, that I may explore. I know how both start, but there’s that slight issue of the plot yet to work out. Once I have a better grasp of the plots, I’ll start writing them.

And on that note, it’s back to the spice mines.

The Morning After

I got up early this morning (well, early for a Saturday) to take a streetcar named St. Charles down to Audubon Park for the NO/AIDS Walk. I was scheduled to work in the Carevan, our mobile testing unit–and had to wonder, why has it taken me this many years to figure out that clearly the Carevan is the place to work other than the Prevention table? The Carevan is air conditioned. 

It is sad how many years it has taken me to figure this out.

I also took the streetcar home, taking pictures of the beautiful homes on the way home–I don’t know why I didn’t do so on the way there, other than it was early and I’d only had two cups of coffee so my mind wasn’t exactly thinking very clearly–but on both trips, plus the walk through Audubon Park (on the way there, I made a wrong turn at the first lagoon and wound up having to walk all the way around the park–I’d forgotten there was a golf course in the middle of Audubon Park–but didn’t make that mistake on the way back to the streetcar stop) I felt connected to New Orleans again in a way that I haven’t in a while; as ‘touristy’ and ‘cliched’ as the St. Charles streetcar line may be, there’s nothing like taking a leisurely ride on it to make you feel connected to the city again. St. Charles Avenue, and all the houses on it, are so beautiful, and scenic–and all the hidden beauty in Audubon Park, along with the beautiful and massive live oaks everywhere…well, it’s been a while, you know? I love New Orleans so much, but I get so wrapped up in my day-to-day life and existence that I forget sometimes how much I love it here and how grateful I am that I get to live here.

There was, for example, a wedding party having their pictures taken in the park among the live oaks that I stumbled on as I walked back to St. Charles. I didn’t photobomb them–though I thought about it–but they were done and walked back to the Avenue by the time I reached them. There was a portable snowball stand set up on the Avenue, and I took a couple of pictures of the bridal party getting snowballs. It was such a uniquely New Orleans moment.

 

And riding the streetcar, wandering through the park–despite the heat and the heavy air, I couldn’t help but think about the next Scotty book, and how I need to make it more about New Orleans, how I can add layers and more depth to it as a book, about how to connect the characters in the case itself to the city and make it more New Orleans somehow. I feel like that’s been missing somehow in my work lately, at least in the last few books: that sense of New Orleans that was always there before.  I think I managed to get some of that into Garden District Gothic, but I am never sure. I know that the Chanse books were starting to feel like the setting was generic; they could have been in any city, they just happened to be set in New Orleans. That was, I think, why the series was starting to feel stale to me, and partly why I decided to end it.

I’m worn out now, exhausted from the heat and the humidity and the heavy thoughts. I am going to repair to my easy chair for a lovely relaxing day of college football (GEAUX TIGERS!) and reading Leslie Budewitz’ Assault and Pepper, in preparation for spending the day tomorrow in the spice mines.