Oh, Hannibal
I'm starting to feel sort of sorry for Thomas Harris, or at least as sorry as I can feel for a guy who writes books for a living, is worth about $100 million dollars and probably smokes high grade Afghan opium from a gold plated hookah while being serviced by Russian concubines.
Harris just released "Hannibal Rising". It is a prequel to "Red Dragon" and "Silence of the Lambs" and "Hannibal". It is supposed to be the "origin story" of Hannibal Lecter. I suppose the idea that Lecter has reached the point that he needs an origin story is a big part of the problem. The term "origin story" is something I have never heard used outside of comic book superheros before. Somewhere along the line Mr. Harris's great literary invention became a comic book superhero (or supervillian I suppose).
The thing is, "Hannibal Rising" is not a bad book. Taken on its own merits in fact it is pretty good. And Thomas Harris is not a bad writer. The truth is that he is, in many ways, an extraordinary one who will never be recognized for his accomplishments. Most of that may be his own fault. But I feel sorry for him just the same.
It is the nature of the modern world that an artist's work cannot simply stand alone - be judged on its own merits. We have to try to peek behind the curtain at the creator of the art and see what was going on. It has become impossible to not do this because SO MUCH information simply swims by us every day. Even an author like Thomas Pynchon who show more studiously refuses to make himself available and tries to have as little about himself known as possible has in fact become a part of his own stories for just that reason. We question his reclusiveness and its motives. It seems affected and unreal and at this point somehow detracts from what he has been doing all these years. In many ways it is this modern world, I think, that has undone Mr. Harris. Or maybe not.
I need to say first that Thomas Harris is a great writer, and I don't use those words lightly. To be a great writer one only has to write one great book and he did that with "Red Dragon". "Silence of the Lambs" is also nearly great. I am not talking about great thrillers, or action books or genre books. I actually mean GREAT books. "Red Dragon" is brilliant and revolutionary. ALL of the books, both fiction and non-fiction, that have been published in popular literature in the last 25 years about criminal profiling and serial killers and examining the workings of a killer's mind have been rip-offs of Harris. Patricia Cornwell should send him royalty checks. He was the first guy that went to the FBI Behavioral Sciences dept. and studied and UNDERSTOOD enough and was able to communicate it in a dramatic narrative. But it goes further than that. He was also the first guy to do the intricate CSI type crime procedural stuff. He got that from the FBI as well and worked it into the story. All of the shows and books about THAT subject owe him fealty. More importantly he realized that none of those things were important if he didn't write well. He did it, and still does it, with short sentences creating dark mood and hazy, doomed characters. The characters have a depth and feel to them in his early work that makes the books an exploration of the mind and of thought and impulse more than simply murder mysteries.
Hannibal Lecter was a small but fascinating character in "Red Dragon". (He also stole the show in the original movie of that book "Manhunter") His narrative purpose was to give insight into the mind of a serial killer and help the FBI Agent, Will Graham, get into the mindset of a sociopathic killer so he could figure out the thought processes of the killer they were currently hunting (the "toothfairy").
"Silence of the Lambs" featured a new FBI Agent, Clarice Starling, hunting a new killer, Buffalo Bill, with Lecter in the same role. He was in prison and being coaxed to help the feds. In the end he escapes.
The thing is that in neither of these books was Lecter the star. In fact he probably appears on less than a fourth of the pages. And that is where he belongs. He CAN'T be the star for some very obvious reasons. The first is that he is evil personified and although that can be overcome as soon as it is Lecter loses his cache as a supervillian. More importantly, Lecter is miles and miles smarter than anyone else in the room. His genius knows no bounds so it is impossible for anybody to truly and fairly compete with him. To make him more real his genius would have to develop limits and again he would become less appealing.
So the point is that Lecter was a literary device, NOT a central figure. And what happens? "Silence of the Lambs" is made into a terrific movie by a great director with a great actress and a great actor and it blows up into one of the most popular and critically acclaimed movies of all time and poor Thomas Harris is stuck owning the rights to the literary character that is literally worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
I can only assume what happened next. A massive case of the shits followed by writer's block. It didn't help that by this time everybody and their dog had written profiler books and crime procedural books so there was no new territory to mine. In addition the generation of the FBI that had been friendly to Harris and Cornwell had retired and had been replaced by people that shut them out (and ran a famously inept lab among other things). And Harris knew that the only character people wanted to read about was Lecter (and maybe Clarice Starling). So what do you do?
Apparently you make a huge fucking mistake and write a bloated novel ("Hannibal") that trashes the FBI pricks that shut you out (Cornwell did the same in her books), desperately tries to develop the character of Starling despite the fact that her character was done with, and most unforgivably, tries to do something, anything, to make Lecter somewhat sympathetic including turning him into a victim, a hero, and in the end a twisted love interest. Yikes!
I can't say this strongly enough. Hannibal Lecter is not a good choice for a central character in a story. Just because millions of people want it doesn't make it a good idea to give it to them. In fact, if millions of people want it you should probably think twice about why.
This brings us to the current state of affairs. A talented writer who has now spent his entire career on one story arc. (His only other published work was a book called "Black Sunday", written before the Lecter series. Yes it is the same "Black Sunday" about terrorists crashing a blimp into the Super Bowl. We all have to work our way up to greatness.) He has now spent 20 years trying to follow up "Silence of the Lambs". His latest effort is much more readable and much more interesting. He is back to his spare, economical writing style. His insight into the disordered human mind is again evident. It is fatally flawed only in the fact that we know what becomes of the young Lecter from the first page. In that Harris is trying to make whole someone who by his very own definition is incomplete.
I guess I feel sorry for Harris because I loved those two early books so much. I am sad that because of pressures internal and external he chose to write books that can't be written instead of telling me more about the best character he has written, Will Graham. He still has time. The best thing would be to branch out to someplace else entirely. Or at least visit Mr. Graham, a flawed genius crippled by his demons.
Until then I will settle for this, a decent read from a once great writer. Here's to hoping he has the hookah and the Russian concubines. show less
I'm starting to feel sort of sorry for Thomas Harris, or at least as sorry as I can feel for a guy who writes books for a living, is worth about $100 million dollars and probably smokes high grade Afghan opium from a gold plated hookah while being serviced by Russian concubines.
Harris just released "Hannibal Rising". It is a prequel to "Red Dragon" and "Silence of the Lambs" and "Hannibal". It is supposed to be the "origin story" of Hannibal Lecter. I suppose the idea that Lecter has reached the point that he needs an origin story is a big part of the problem. The term "origin story" is something I have never heard used outside of comic book superheros before. Somewhere along the line Mr. Harris's great literary invention became a comic book superhero (or supervillian I suppose).
The thing is, "Hannibal Rising" is not a bad book. Taken on its own merits in fact it is pretty good. And Thomas Harris is not a bad writer. The truth is that he is, in many ways, an extraordinary one who will never be recognized for his accomplishments. Most of that may be his own fault. But I feel sorry for him just the same.
It is the nature of the modern world that an artist's work cannot simply stand alone - be judged on its own merits. We have to try to peek behind the curtain at the creator of the art and see what was going on. It has become impossible to not do this because SO MUCH information simply swims by us every day. Even an author like Thomas Pynchon who show more studiously refuses to make himself available and tries to have as little about himself known as possible has in fact become a part of his own stories for just that reason. We question his reclusiveness and its motives. It seems affected and unreal and at this point somehow detracts from what he has been doing all these years. In many ways it is this modern world, I think, that has undone Mr. Harris. Or maybe not.
I need to say first that Thomas Harris is a great writer, and I don't use those words lightly. To be a great writer one only has to write one great book and he did that with "Red Dragon". "Silence of the Lambs" is also nearly great. I am not talking about great thrillers, or action books or genre books. I actually mean GREAT books. "Red Dragon" is brilliant and revolutionary. ALL of the books, both fiction and non-fiction, that have been published in popular literature in the last 25 years about criminal profiling and serial killers and examining the workings of a killer's mind have been rip-offs of Harris. Patricia Cornwell should send him royalty checks. He was the first guy that went to the FBI Behavioral Sciences dept. and studied and UNDERSTOOD enough and was able to communicate it in a dramatic narrative. But it goes further than that. He was also the first guy to do the intricate CSI type crime procedural stuff. He got that from the FBI as well and worked it into the story. All of the shows and books about THAT subject owe him fealty. More importantly he realized that none of those things were important if he didn't write well. He did it, and still does it, with short sentences creating dark mood and hazy, doomed characters. The characters have a depth and feel to them in his early work that makes the books an exploration of the mind and of thought and impulse more than simply murder mysteries.
Hannibal Lecter was a small but fascinating character in "Red Dragon". (He also stole the show in the original movie of that book "Manhunter") His narrative purpose was to give insight into the mind of a serial killer and help the FBI Agent, Will Graham, get into the mindset of a sociopathic killer so he could figure out the thought processes of the killer they were currently hunting (the "toothfairy").
"Silence of the Lambs" featured a new FBI Agent, Clarice Starling, hunting a new killer, Buffalo Bill, with Lecter in the same role. He was in prison and being coaxed to help the feds. In the end he escapes.
The thing is that in neither of these books was Lecter the star. In fact he probably appears on less than a fourth of the pages. And that is where he belongs. He CAN'T be the star for some very obvious reasons. The first is that he is evil personified and although that can be overcome as soon as it is Lecter loses his cache as a supervillian. More importantly, Lecter is miles and miles smarter than anyone else in the room. His genius knows no bounds so it is impossible for anybody to truly and fairly compete with him. To make him more real his genius would have to develop limits and again he would become less appealing.
So the point is that Lecter was a literary device, NOT a central figure. And what happens? "Silence of the Lambs" is made into a terrific movie by a great director with a great actress and a great actor and it blows up into one of the most popular and critically acclaimed movies of all time and poor Thomas Harris is stuck owning the rights to the literary character that is literally worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
I can only assume what happened next. A massive case of the shits followed by writer's block. It didn't help that by this time everybody and their dog had written profiler books and crime procedural books so there was no new territory to mine. In addition the generation of the FBI that had been friendly to Harris and Cornwell had retired and had been replaced by people that shut them out (and ran a famously inept lab among other things). And Harris knew that the only character people wanted to read about was Lecter (and maybe Clarice Starling). So what do you do?
Apparently you make a huge fucking mistake and write a bloated novel ("Hannibal") that trashes the FBI pricks that shut you out (Cornwell did the same in her books), desperately tries to develop the character of Starling despite the fact that her character was done with, and most unforgivably, tries to do something, anything, to make Lecter somewhat sympathetic including turning him into a victim, a hero, and in the end a twisted love interest. Yikes!
I can't say this strongly enough. Hannibal Lecter is not a good choice for a central character in a story. Just because millions of people want it doesn't make it a good idea to give it to them. In fact, if millions of people want it you should probably think twice about why.
This brings us to the current state of affairs. A talented writer who has now spent his entire career on one story arc. (His only other published work was a book called "Black Sunday", written before the Lecter series. Yes it is the same "Black Sunday" about terrorists crashing a blimp into the Super Bowl. We all have to work our way up to greatness.) He has now spent 20 years trying to follow up "Silence of the Lambs". His latest effort is much more readable and much more interesting. He is back to his spare, economical writing style. His insight into the disordered human mind is again evident. It is fatally flawed only in the fact that we know what becomes of the young Lecter from the first page. In that Harris is trying to make whole someone who by his very own definition is incomplete.
I guess I feel sorry for Harris because I loved those two early books so much. I am sad that because of pressures internal and external he chose to write books that can't be written instead of telling me more about the best character he has written, Will Graham. He still has time. The best thing would be to branch out to someplace else entirely. Or at least visit Mr. Graham, a flawed genius crippled by his demons.
Until then I will settle for this, a decent read from a once great writer. Here's to hoping he has the hookah and the Russian concubines. show less