Storytellersunplugged

- Jeffrey Thomas

This blog entry comes from the Innocent Abroad. Well, at least that’s how I must have come across as I flew from Tokyo to Vietnam to spend Christmas with my wife’s family. As I sat crunched into my little airplane seat resting my eyes, my hands folded primly in my lap, someone (presumably the Vietnamese girl seated opposite me) pointed me out to one of the Japanese stewardesses, who then said, “Yes — innocent!” Hm! Maybe they’d be disappointed to know that I really ain’t no angel!

Disappointment. I guess that’s what I felt during my first-ever stop in Japan on my way to Vietnam (in the past it’s been via Hong Kong or Korea). Because Japan comes across to me as being such a colorful, exciting place — the home of samurais, video games, J-horror! — I guess I expected something more. As it turns out, Nakita Airport was rather drab, lacking in charm or style, compared to the airports in Hong Kong and Korea. (Talk about jaded, I know, but…) Even the landscape, coming in, was lackluster by comparison. Even the sounvenir t-shirts in the scanty gift shops were less impressive than the ones I’ve bought in Hong Kong. I guess I experienced what the Japanese call the “Paris Syndrome.”

This is the tragic affliction being suffered by Japanese tourists who travel to Paris and are not only disillusioned, apparently, to find that the city doesn’t live up to their fanciful expectations, but are psychologically scarred by the fact. (They are also shocked to find that the French are rude; they must really be out of the loop!) About a hundred tourists a year suffer this trauma, with about a dozen requiring treatment for feelings of persecution and suicidal depression. Well, at least I haven’t gotten suicidal over those cheap sumo wrestler t-shirts at the airport, yet!

Judging from the comments at Amazon.com, I think a lot of readers of the new Thomas Harris book, HANNIBAL RISING, are experiencing something akin to this Paris Syndrome. Not that one should take Amazon comments too seriously. In fact, I pray that they don’t discourage people from checking out any book for themselves. (After all, one “review” of my own novel A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET: THE DREAM DEALERS refers to the virtual reality oufit in the story as being a “softwear compant.”) Nevertheless, these many negative comments about HANNIBAL RISING are getting a rise out of me.

Instead of trusting the creator of the infamous villain (become hero?) Hannibal Lecter to put the character through his paces as he sees fit, readers are having fits as if Harris has betrayed them somehow. Instead of respecting the author’s artistic direction, they judge the book by their own preconceptions of what it should have been. (Yet if they’re so skilled at plotting, where are their own New York Times bestsellers?) There’s nothing wrong with being disappointed in a book’s direction. I wasn’t too pleased with where Clarice ended up at the end of HANNIBAL (which I otherwise loved). I would have liked to see the next book bring back RED DRAGON’s Will Graham (to me, Harris’ most fascinating character) to hunt down both Hannibal and Clarice! Yes, Hannibal had a rough childhood, but he’s still a bad guy, and as Will Graham himself says, cry for the child they were but stop the killer they are. And as I’m still reading HANNIBAL RISING, I may myself not be too crazy about the book by the time I’ve finished. We’re entitled to our impressions and opinions as readers. But there’s a level of indignation in these Amazon comments that is really out of proportion; it’s as if the readers feel the character belongs to them, instead of Harris. One of these comments sports the heading: “What did Thomas Harris do with Thomas Harris?!” As if to say that this reader not only knows better who Hannibal Lecter is, and what he should be up to, but that they also know who Thomas Harris is better than he knows himself. Another example of this line of thought: “this book had to be written by someone else other than Thomas Harris.” And this says it all: “How odd it is that Harris doesn’t even seem to understand his own characters; that we the readers know Dr. Lecter better than the author does.” Such comments surely merit having one’s impudent tongue bitten out by Francis Dolarhyde!

When Arthur Conan Doyle tried to kill off Sherlock Holmes, the clamoring of his readers made him bring him back from the dead, and I believe I heard that even Stephen King is begging J. K. Rowling not to kill off Harry Potter down the road (if so, such sentimentality from the guy who let the kiddie croak in CUJO!). People were so upset about the death of Tess in Hardy’s TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES that apparently even a judge protested to Hardy that he wouldn’t have sentenced Tess to death — but Hardy was very much pained by his decision to see her hang. Clive Barker reports that he wept over the decision to kill one character in IMAJICA. The writer is the god who molds these creatures into existence, and should presumably have the right to crush them back into clay or reshape them into a new configuration as they see fit. But still, it is an intriguing question: do readers, after a while, own a character as much as the writer does, or at least own it in a different way?

For my own part I have been enjoying HANNIBAL RISING immensely, and my admitted initial doubts about its direction have been forgotten as I entrust Harris to take me by the hand through the dark labyrinth of Lecter’s early evolution. There is something about his style that pulls me along like no other’s, while maintaining a high level of literary excellence along with the twists of the ice pick. Yes, the tone is different from the clinical feeling of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. HANNIBAL RISING (the only thing I’m not crazy about so far is the title), especially in its earliest chapters, reads like a morbid fairy tale. But after all the RED DRAGON rip-offs in books and movies, do we really want more of the same old, same old FBI versus serial killer thriller? To me, HANNIBAL RISING is not only a look into how a child can be mutated into a vicious madman; it shows us how the scary journey of every person from childhood to adulthood leaves us with both bright gifts and dark curses.

Ahh, who’d have thought that — as in a recent Storytellers essay I wrote about Mark Z. Danielewski’s dizzy ONLY REVOLUTIONS — that I’d need to leap to the defense of an underdog like…Thomas Harris?

Well, I took the long route in arriving at this kernel of thought, but after about twenty-four hours of flying to arrive in Vietnam, I guess that’s where my head is at. Anyway, I extend my holiday greetings and best wishes to all. And based on what I’ve read of HANNIBAL RISING (and every one of Harris’ earlier books, including the still topical BLACK SUNDAY), I encourage you to dive right into the book if you receive it as a Christmas present, or buy it with any Amazon/Borders/Barnes and Noble gift card you may receive. I say, let’s show the master of thrillers that his bold choices are appreciated by his truly loyal fans. Let’s let the writer make up his own mind about what he chooses to write about, or at least, let’s show that we can make up our own minds about what we choose to read. But what do I know? After all, I’m just another reader, arrogantly thrusting his opinion into cyberspace, my essay heading just another oh-so-witty Amazon-style pun. I’m just as guilty as the rest. Told you I weren’t no innocent!