Letterbox. Gosh-darn, bloomin’ letterboxes.
It’s a bit too late to change this, I’m afraid, but apparently I have allowed a little hint that I am not, in fact, a native of 1920s England to creep into my latest book, A Pretender’s Murder. An advanced reader review has pointed out that the correct British term for the slots in doors that postmen drop your letters through is “letterbox,” not “mail slot” as I’d written. These mail slots or letterboxes aren’t really a thing anywhere I’ve been in North America, so I thought that any English-language word for them would be the British one. Now I must assume then that there exists some Anglophile corner of the US or Canada that has these things … or do North Americans simply insist on having their own words for things they do not have?
Such are the pitfalls of not writing in your own world. Not that I’m going to let that stop me. I’ve already corrected the one instance of “mail slot” in my next book and I’m immersing myself right back into this period I’ve never lived in and this place I only ever visit.
I’m hardly alone here. H.R.F. Keating was an Englishman who set eight or nine novels in India before actually setting foot in India; and then, only because Air India took note of his novels and extended an invitation to fly him to Bombay. But if Keating’s books are loved, it is because of the care he took in portraying the setting and the compassion he had for voices not his own. He did the best he could with the resources available to him at the time, and succeeded. So I, with the internet at my fingertips and centuries of British literature for reference, have no excuse. If you’re writing in a culture outside your own, you had better be the best reflection of that culture as you can possibly be.
Remember, when Ronald Knox wrote that “no Chinaman must figure in the story,” it was meant as a shot against lazy stereotyping and the exoticism of the “other”, far too common in the “yellow peril” thrillers of his time. We do not want Chinamen, no: we want Chinese people. As such, you get a pass if you write your “Chinamen” — shorthand here for any characters of a different race or culture from you — as human beings. And you want that pass. It represents the difference between cultural appropriation (bad!) and cultural exchange (good!). Keating got that pass, and I think the key there is equal parts curiosity and humility. You learn and you keep learning. You remember that you are a student with limited knowledge, not an all-knowing professor. You accept the invitation to visit Bombay, and you care when someone points out that you’ve gone and called your letterboxes by the wrong term.
Also, you amplify the voices of those who know through lived experience rather than through mere scholarship. Though that’s probably not much of an issue when, in your case, the “voice of lived experience” is Agatha Christie.
But now you must be wondering, why do this at all? The writing gurus all say to “write what you know.” And even if you do manage to win the Chinaman pass, the risk of losing it again never really goes away. Is that really what you want?
Well, see, there’s actually a peculiar advantage to writing outside of your place and time. To explain, let me begin by saying that I lived the first twenty years of my life in Singapore, and the last thirty in Canada. You’d think I’d therefore be more comfortable writing about Singapore in the 1980s or about Canada in the present day. But what if I were to make the same “letterbox” mistake writing about either of these settings? A mistake about 1920s England can be dismissed as a minor research failure. One must study so many things about foreign settings that one or two errors are bound to slip through. But a mistake about 1980s Singapore as one who claims to have lived the entire decade there? Fraud! Pretender!
No, no. It’s much easier to write about a place where, for the most part, I know what it is that I don’t know. It’s easier to be humble and curious about a thing when one is not automatically expected to have known it all through lived experience. Familiarity, as they say, breeds contempt, and the absolute last thing you want as a writer is anything approaching contempt for your setting. I have to admire, therefore, the writers who find magic and mystery in their present-day surroundings, but I was built for complacency and require a little added distance to spark fascination.
Besides, it has happened once before, and I’m sure it can happen again: somewhere around my eighth or ninth book, perhaps British Airways will take note and extend an invitation to fly me to London, free of charge. I will keep a watchful eye on my (ahem!) letterbox.
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