Notes From the Lizard Lair

Ruminations: Rage of Angels

January 4, 2009

I begin my Brainfood book excursion with just one title, because it’s late and my brain has turned to mush. I may revise this musing later, but for now, some thoughts on Sidney Sheldon’s Rage of Angels.

It was a best seller about 1980 or so, and is the type of book I would never pick up: mainstream drama, strong emphasis on man/woman love interests, contrived trauma/drama almost romance-like in nature. Or so I thought.

Lately, however, I read that  Sheldon didn’t start writing novels until he was in his 50s, only doing this after a long and successful career of stage and screenplays and television production.  This is the man who brought us The Patty Duke Show, Hart to Hart, and I Dream of Jeannie.  His first novel won the Edgar Allen Poe Mystery Award, the second was a run away best seller, and after that he dominated the bestseller lists for years.

He’d go into the studio every day at 9 am, and then have his secretary hold all his call and leave him totally undisturbed until noon. He dedicated those 3 hours every day to his novel writing, and was a raving success at it.

Curious about what kind of work a man like this produced, I finally after all these many years picked up a copy of one of his books, and decided to give it a read. It is, I am both appalled and delighted to say, a page turner.  He takes recognizable characters but puts them through various stressors so that the protagonist’s gradual shift towards the Dark Side makes perfect sense and is excruciatingly inevitable.

I’m not done with it yet -  with my deadline looming I haven’t had a chance to get into reading as I normally do.  But it is grabbing enough so that I stayed up waaay too late last night, to see (ah yes that classic thing) what would happen next.  Sheldon’s not too romance-y after all, and is a skillful crafter of tension that grows organically out of character dilemmas. I don’t think it’s the best, most moving story I’ve ever read (so far; halfway through), but it is intriguing even though the set of characters (a lawyer, a politician, a mafia guy) are ones I wouldn’t ordinarily have much interest in reading about in fiction. 

What is it he’s doing? What is it that this man brought to the table after honing his skill of dramatic storytelling in performance drama (and comedy) for years and years?  He learned something from that, to be able to sit down and turn out bestsellers right out of the gate.  When I’m done with it I may read it again with a red pen in hand, to mark those points where he upped the tension incrementally.  There’s a lot to learn by deconstructing successful fiction: even if its success is “only” in a commercial mass market area, the fact still remains that the story is satisfying to thousands, even hundreds of thousands (or in his case, millions) of readers. 

It’s foolish, I think, for writers who seek success in fiction to scorn books that find good mass sales, as if in doing so they must have shorted craft and are somehow “cheating” their way to popularity. Refined fiction it may not be, but the numbers speak for themselves. I think of all the screaming and moaning that went on in certain circles (and probably still does) about the success of Robert Jordan with his Wheel of time series:  sour grapes, or legitimate literary critique?

A debate for a later post, perhaps. But for now in review-land, this is Teramis, heading off to the Cave as night comes to an end.  And it being the end of a Saturday night, live, I must say, “Have a good night, and a pleasant tomorrow.”  ?

Want more Ruminations? You’ll find a guide to ‘em here:  The Literary Lizard’s List of Books and Sundries