Eccentric Flower:199907/Heat and Hannibal

Hmm, the mailbag has been oddly silent. Not just here, but over on mouth organ as well. Maybe you're all so hot from this weather that you don't have the strength to type. It is, after all, Excessively Hot. I use the same standard Kymm uses: The cats are too hot to fight with each other. That's warm.

Or perhaps you gave up on me because I didn't write anything here for five days. Hey, I did try to make up for lost time. I posted three entries, rapid-fire, and then posted a fourth entry so close upon their heels that I came within a few minutes of violating the Three-Entry Rule.

Actually I think I may have posted the entry before this a little too quickly. It holds my personal record for spelling and grammar errors. Not only did I have to go back and catch some after I posted it, but I had to do it again the next day because I missed a few more.

I blame the heat. It's been hard to even think about writing, much less actually do it. I put together 900 words for Elizabeth's Circles project last night; that was the most writing I'd done in a while.

On the other hand, this morning the subject of my next novel popped into my head, fully fleshed-out and ready to go. So now I have to finish the Aedie novel just so I can start the next one. Even if someone else has already written it. Grrr.

Speaking of novels, I read Hannibal today (as I predicted, a quick read). A couple of people have indicated that they're curious to hear my reactions. There are some spoilers here, though, so if you'd rather not know about the plot, for whatever reasons, you'd better skip the rest of this entry.

Thomas Harris writes some of the best trash fiction I've ever read, absolute page-turners, and I wasn't disappointed this time - but this time, I thought that where he was taking the characters, what they were developing into, was ultimately more interesting than the suspense elements. That surprised me. His previous two books with Lecter didn't have much in the way of character development, although Silence of the Lambs hinted at it a bit.

I'm not knocking the suspense elements. The book's structure (multiple parties trying simultaneously to hunt down Lecter, but for entirely different reasons) is what keeps the thing ticking, and it runs like a fine watch. Harris's pacing and prose are so tasty that you only occasionally notice his annoying habits, like a tendency to shift back and forth between past and present tense without warning.

But ultimately it's not who will catch Hannibal Lecter that matters here; it's the changes Harris rings upon Clarice Starling.

The most important thing to know about this book is that it succeeds at its core trick: It makes Lecter into a sympathetic character. Well, perhaps "sympathetic" is the wrong word. By the end of the book, if it has worked its guile on you properly, you should no longer see Lecter as a villain, at least.

Harris seems to be saying that Lecter is impossible to judge on the normal good/evil scale - that he is in a different universe, an alien creature (Harris frequently refers to him, with various shades of meaning, as "the monster") for whom the normal values do not and cannot apply.

The fun part is that, from an early point in the book, you realize that Lecter is intent on trying to get Starling to join him in that universe.

Harris makes it plausible that playing by the rules has gained Starling nothing, that there is nothing left for her in this universe, that she shines far too harshly for it - so that when she finally is swept into Lecter's universe, her acceptance makes complete sense.

And so does the formal dinner at the end. Several people have indicated that this sequence was way over the top, and I myself said I thought it was Harris thumbing his nose at Hollywood: I dare you to film this. Now I recant that. Lecter is trying to cure Starling of her remaining mental knots, and the dinner party events are the only logical way - in his universe - to untie the last of those knots.

Furthermore, it is not a violent scene; in fact it contains the least violent, least disturbing killing in the book.

The book is both violent and disturbing, make no mistake - although not on the same scale as, say, James Ellroy, whom I really should write about one day. Mason Verger, for example, is a truly evil man; he's the character who succeeds at making Lecter look like an old friend to the reader by contrast. At least, one thinks upon watching him, at least Lecter has rules of conduct he follows, however odd they may be. At least Lecter is ... a ... a gentleman.

And that's important. This is a story of not just smells and tastes, but taste ... good taste and bad, and why the former is important. In its twisted way, it could almost be a comedy of manners.

It could also be an old-fashioned morality tale. All the right people get rewarded in an appropriate way; all the wrong people get punished fittingly. Everyone gets what they deserve.

And the odd thing is that by the end of the book you believe that Lecter deserves the ending he gets. Or I did, anyway. Your mileage may vary.

Wow, that was more words than I thought. I need to write some fiction soon; can you tell?

Okay then. More later, about Marc's visit to the dentist and why gay men like Patsy Cline; the Women's World Cup; and the arrival of Cane Man to our neighborhood.