the lambs have totally shut up; the pigs are center-stage. quite literally.
It is true that Dr. Lecter created the vacancy at the Palazzo Capponi by removing the former curator--a simple process requiring a few seconds' work on the old man and a modest outlay for two bags of cement--but once the way was clear he won the job fairly, demonstrating to the Belle Arti Committee an extraordinary linguistic capability, sight-translating medieval Italian and Latin from the densest Gothic black-letter manuscripts.
As I read Hannibal by Thomas Harris in bed this morning, I came across a passage that describes Dr. Lecter's exquisite taste, pardon the pun, in wine, in food, in art, in everything. Almost immediately thereafter the book mentioned that he used a Phillips laptop, and I damn near threw the book across the room.
I read the passage to Darin and said, "Oh please! With tastes like that? He clearly uses Macs."
Darin agreed with me, although he cracked up first.
My suspicion is that the author, Thomas Harris, uses a Phillips laptop and simply assigned one to Dr. Lecter, without realizing that a man who drinks Chateau d'Yquem and eats white truffles wouldn't go near Windows without an exceptionally good reason, such as a desire to get near the afternoon's tasty snack of a Windows user.
Hannibal arrived in the mail yesterday. In fact, I got two copies: one for me, and one for a neighbor down the block. I'm quite sure mail carriers all over America yesterday were cursing Thomas Harris's name roundly, as they delivered tons and tons of single-book orders from Amazon. I dropped my neighbor's copy off before heading off to school. I did not begin reading the book until I returned from class, because I was quite sure that I wouldn't go to class if I started reading it.
I almost didn't go to class any way, because yesterday morning I received a message from a fellow classmate, roundly excoriating me for a)something I had said in my comments on his writing last week and b)telling me off for making judgements about him from his writing. Evidently he didn't want me to talk to anyone about this message he sent me, but you know what? I'll make the decisions about what I talk about, thankyouverymuch.
I wrote back and (with Darin's urging) stayed extremely calm and detached in my response.
At the bottom of the critique of his writing that I gave him last week, I had put: "Pilipino: the language of the Philippines, based on Tagalog. Filipino: a native of the Philippines." I thought he used the two terms interchangeably in his writing. I took these definitions out of the dictionary. He explained the difference between Filipino and Pilipino as descriptions of both people and languages. I apologized for having made such broad generalizations (on the basis of dictionary definitions, which are inadequate). I also urged him to put this information into his writing, without making it a polemic, a la Ayn Rand. Most Americans, I think, would not be aware of the implications of these terms.
Of much more concern to me was the part of his letter saying that he couldn't possibly be sexist, given that he was raised by women and his best friends are women. (I will skip over, for the moment, what is obvious to any adult who has dealt with prejudices, either their own or others: any time anyone says, "My best friends are..." you may be absolutely sure that that person is absolutely guilty of whatever -ism they have been accused of.)
I wrote back and said that my critique of his work dealt solely with the work. I have no idea what he's like; I concern myself with what's on the page. I do not confuse the art and artist. I do not assume that anything you write about comes directly from your life experience. Hell, I'm not sure you can assume that about someone based on their journal.
I do think that what you write about tells me how your brain works, what you're interested in, and, unless you indicate otherwise with a deftness of ability most of us lack, how you experience the world. None of which matters a damn when it comes to judging whether the writing in front of me is good or not.
When I read a piece of fiction from you, I couldn't care less whether you were beaten as a child, had an extramarital affair, or kill and eat hapless bystanders. (Don't worry, I'll get back to the good doctor in a few moments.) I care as to what emotions you put across in the writing. Do I believe the narrator had an extramarital affair? If so, then this is a successful piece of writing; if not, you have failed. End of story. No excuses. No "But this really happened!" No "I didn't mean that, you know that!" Do or do not; there is no try.
The narrator of his story came across as a self-centered sexist jerk. I pointed out several phrases in the text that led me to this conclusion. And last week in class, when we discussed his chapter, every woman in the class was up in arms about this. It wasn't just me (in fact, I didn't even mention it out loud, thinking that perhaps I was wrong or too sensitive).
In my e-mail response to him, I said that he should try to figure out why he had gotten these responses--he didn't have to agree with us or change anything, but he should understand why he was getting these reactions, in order to be the best writer he can be. When you get half the class saying flat out that they wouldn't keep reading because the narrator was so offensive, you should know why you have pissed your readership off. It's a perfectly justifiable artistic aim--cf. Bret Easton Ellis and American Psycho--but you have to learn to be in control of it.
When you have no idea at all why everyone's upset at you, you're a bad writer.
He wrote back today and said that he had been upset about the Filipino/Pilipino thing and he realized that I hadn't called him sexist after all. He appreciated my maturity in replying to him.
I hope he thinks more carefully before flaring out at someone next time. Because most people's knee-jerk reaction is not to ask Darin the best way to respond calmly.
No one else in class had gotten a message from him. Everybody else wanted to read the letter, but I hadn't brought a copy with me, which was best, I think. After the piece of writing we read for last week's class, everyone was predisposed to hate him; I just feel sorry for him.
I came home from class and immediately picked up Hannibal. I read until I couldn't keep my eyes open. I started reading first thing in the morning and kept going until I finished, with only short interruptions.
The plot synopsis in Salon, which many people (including me) thought was a joke, is correct. What has amazed me is that Hannibal is a much better book than you could possibly expect from that synopsis. It is a book about the world turned upside down: the good guys are the bad guys, Clarice makes some hard choices about what she believes in, and Hannibal Lecter is positively decent in comparison not only to the main villain, Mason Verger, but to the weaselly bureaucrats who are more concerned with getting ahead than in doing their jobs.
I had thought that perhaps having a lot of Lecter (instead of the bits we got in Harris's previous novels) might be really bad--a case of a little going a long way--but Lecter remains a great character, even when we spend a lot more time with him.
Dr. Lecter has been on the loose for 7 years and has mostly been a good boy. However, one of his victims from before he was put in the hospital for the criminally insane lived and wants revenge. Mason Verger has enough money to find Lecter and put a vicious plan for revenge into motion. Most of the machinations of the plot center on (who else?) Clarice Starling, the FBI agent who managed to get Lecter to help her find the serial killer Buffalo Bill and who has a measure of respect from the psychotic psychiatrist, who famously respects nothing and no one. A government bureaucrat, Paul Krendler, has his own designs on the future that happily intersect with Verger's (and Verger's money), and if it means taking down Starling, so be it. Conveniently, everyone's favorite FBI agent has more pluck than to put up with that nonsense.
Harris tells us Dr. Lecter's background (ie, how he got to the be the lovable cannibal we know today), which is interesting but is, I think, ultimately a mistake: we like our monsters to be mysterious. (I wouldn't be surprised if he had this background in mind when he first dreamt Lecter up, but showing us his history is like showing us the man behind the curtain.) He also goes a little overboard on Clarice's psychology, but it works in a quirky, pop-psych-this way.
Harris writes in an odd third-person omniscient viewpoint throughout the novel, talking at the reader rather than sticking us directly into the character's thoughts. It's like a sparse version of Dickens. He uses the present tense quite a lot, as if orienting us in a new situation. I'm not sure how this would go over if he weren't Thomas Harris, but he is and that's all there is to that.
If it is true that Harris has insisted that a movie made of this book must be totally faithful to it in every way, do not expect to see the movie version any time soon. If ever. Not only are there some things totally stomach-wrenching--cannibalistic pigs, anyone?--but let's just say the ending would have audiences going, Oh my GOD! The dinner scene is so far beyond the pale I can hear Harris giggling as he writes it: "No one's going to make a movie of this, goddammit!" No one--but no one--wants to see Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster doing these things, no matter how much you want to visit with Hannibal and Clarice again.
And the ending-ending: I will say only the story goes to its natural conclusion, one that would not sit well with many people. Or rather, it would sit better with them than they might care to admit.
If you liked Harris's previous serial killer novels (Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs) I think you'll like this one. Of course, then you've probably already bought it.
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com