Viktor Shklovsky and Me: Guest Post by Peter Abrahams aka Spencer Quinn

PETER ABRAHAMS aka SPENCER QUINN:

VIKTOR SHKLOVSKY AND ME

I’m sure you’re all familiar with Viktor Shklovsky, but for the one or two who may have temporarily forgotten him, here’s the Cliffs Notes version. By the way, Viktor died in 1984 (age 89) and Cliffs Notes began in 1958, so it’s conceivable that Shklovsky knew of Cliffs Notes! Did he come across them in his long and varied career in the literary world? If anyone out there has information on a Cliffs Notes – Viktor Shklovsky connection, please get in touch. My guess is he would have loved Cliffs Notes, but my mind is open.

Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky was a Russian literary theorist – as well as a novelist, poet, critic, and screenwriter, but our interest in him here today is strictly on the theoretical side, where he is chiefly known for introducing the idea of ostranenie. Ostranenie - as I scarcely need remind you – can be rendered as defamiliarization or estrangement in English. It’s all about breathing life into the overly familiar in art – but let him tell it: “And so, in order to return sensation to our limbs, in order to make us feel objects, to make a stone feel stony, man has been given the tool of art. The purpose of art, then, is to lead us to a knowledge of a thing through the organ of sight instead of recognition. By ‘enstranging’ objects and complicating form, the device of art makes perception long and ‘laborious.’ The perceptual process in art has a purpose all its own and ought to be extended to the fullest.” (Shklovsky, Viktor. Theory of Prose. Translated by Benjamin Sher, Dalkey Archive Press, 1990, p. 6.)

And there you have it! Although at this point you may be asking what this has to do with the writer (me) of a series of mystery novels (Chet and Bernie) narrated by the detective’s dog (Chet). Answer: plenty! First, Chet is not a talking dog. He’s as canine as I can make him. And therefore we believe in the reality of how he experiences the world we share, he and us. But his take is very different from ours. He defamiliarizes the overly familiar. Ta-dah! We end up seeing things, to say nothing of smelling, hearing, tasting them – talk about the perceptual process! - in a brand new way. Voila! The tool of art in action! Fresh mysteries for sale, out of an old Russian oven! Meet Chet, four-legged master of ostranenie!

By now you’re probably wondering whether I myself would have been welcomed in 1920’s Soviet literary society. What other answer can there be but “with open arms?” At least at first, but with the Gulag looming later.

Did I know all this theory before I began writing Chet and Bernie, and is it therefore all just an exercise to illustrate a recondite point? Of course not! I only became aware of it quite recently, when I learned that the Chet/Shklovsky axis was a topic of conversation in certain academic circles. What fabulous news, I thought, because I know there’s resistance to the Chet and Bernie series from a kind of reader who believes the stories will be “cute” and lacking in literary depth and rigor. To those dissidents I can now say: Take it up with Mr. S!

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Spencer Quinn aka Peter Abrahams is the bestselling author of the Chet and Bernie mystery series, as well as the #1 New York Times bestselling Bowser and Birdie series for middle-grade readers. He lives on Cape Cod with his wife Diana—and dogs Audrey and Pearl. Of Mutts and Men is the latest in the Chet and Bernie series.

Spencer Quinn: Secrets of Chet and Bernie Revealed

Today I welcome back Spencer Quinn on the publication of his 7th Chet and Bernie mystery. Spencer Quinn is the pseudonmym of Massachusetts author Peter Abrahams, who has written literary thrillers such as Oblivion and Lights Out. His Chet and Bernie books, starting with 2009's Dog on It have brought him a whole new base of fans. In their latest adventure, Chet and his private-eye human head to Washington, D.C., for a case involving political corruption, an insidious international conspiracy and a menacing guinea pig named Barnum.

Spencer Quinn
Secrets of Chet and Bernie Revealed: 

I saw this sign somewhere recently: “If there are no dogs in heaven, I want to go where they go.”

Welcome to the world where dogs take center stage! I’m part of that world, although it happened pretty much by accident. One day my wife said, “You should do something with dogs.” Dogs have wandered in and out of many of my novels – there’s Buster in OBLIVION, for example, singled out for praise by the L.A. Times reviewer, but I was brought up never to descend to the level of mentioning my own reviews, so forget this part. The point is, I’d never written from the dog’s POV before, in fact, had almost never written in the first person. Yet somehow I knew right away – this is the fun kind of thing that can happen in the writing biz – that I wanted to write detective fiction through the eyes, and way more important, the ears and nose, of the detective’s dog. And this dog would not be a talking dog! Not a human dressed up in a dog suit! Not knowing and ironic! But a dog, a dog as canine as I could make him. Thus: Chet.

The Chet and Bernie novels are classic mysteries of the sidekick narration school, which goes all the way back to Conan Doyle. Plotting mysteries is a lot like solving real crimes: you sift through clues until a logical chain starts to reveal itself. Well, logical chains are not Chet’s thing. And even if they were, at the moment a logical clue was about to emerge he might sniff a cheeto under a couch and become instantly non-present. So – as I happily discovered not far into DOG ON IT, first in the series – Chet turned out to be an unreliable narrator, big time. To marry the unreliable narrator to the traditional mystery is exciting, fun, and challenging, which keeps things interesting for the writer. That’s important: There’s no faking interest, as readers of series that have gone dead in midstream well know.

PAW AND ORDER is the seventh book in the series, and second on a dangerous road trip Chet and Bernie have taken, away from their home territory out west – actually Arizona, a fact Chet finally picked up in THE SOUND AND THE FURRY, book six. People often ask if the series should be read in any particular order. That is not a question Chet would ever ask! He’s the type who just dives in. You’re welcome to do likewise!

The Chet and Bernie novels are not cozies. There’s darkness and suffering. Chet goes through some harsh and difficult things. But – and I noticed this more as a reader than a writer – he bounces back to his reset position pretty quickly. His reset position is one of optimism and joie de vie. I myself am not a quick bouncer back, but here’s a strange thing: since Chet came along, I find myself copying him in this regard. How strange that a figment of your own imagination could change you! Chet’s sunny disposition has struck many readers, by the way, and the most rewarding thing about the series for me are the emails and comments I get about how these books have brightened some lives. I never set out to do that. It’s humbling.

Readers at signings often ask about my approach to research. So now I’d like to introduce my crack research team: Audrey on the left, Pearl on the right. Plus here’s Willow, an intern just added to the west coast office, under the direction of one of my daughters. They do sleep on the job quite a bit, but they’ve never steered me wrong, and they work for chew strips and pats. If there’s a better business plan than mine, let me know.

Audrey

Pearl

 

Willow

Q is for Quinn: Spencer Quinn

Continuing the Crime Fiction Author Meme, today I welcome Spencer Quinn. Q is for Quinn. This article appears in the latest issue of Mystery Readers Journal (Volume 27:3): Animal Mysteries.

Spencer Quinn is the pen name Edgar Award winning crime fiction writer Peter Abrahams uses when he’s writing the New York Times bestselling Chet and Bernie series. Book four, The Dog Who Knew Too Much, just came out Sept. 6, 2011.

SPENCER QUINN:

From a writer’s point of view, the most important thing to understand about Chet, narrator of the Chet and Bernie mystery series, is that he’s not a talking dog. Chet’s a narrating dog. Anyone at all familiar with dogs knows they have a life narrative unspooling in their heads. That’s what I try to get on the page in these books. Chet is not a human in a dog suit. But he is an intelligent mammal, and so is Bernie Little, private eye and Chet’s partner in the Little Detective Agency, and that gives them some points of commonality.

So – how to get into a dog’s head? You could read a lot of scientific studies and try to bring a tower of data to life. You could make a list of canine attributes, such as being lower to the ground than humans when standing, and have that list on-screen at all times. Or, you could do what I do, and just jump in, relying on the writer’s most powerful tool – the imagination. And, jumping right in, I began to discover something I loved about Chet: his joie de vivre. Readers have responded to it over and over. Chet forgets the bad. He forgets the good, too, but much more slowly. Good mysteries give more than just plot, more too even than plot, character, mood, sparkling writing (as we climb the ladder): they’re also about something. The Chet and Bernie series is about love, specifically the love between the two main characters.

Jumping right in is my M.O. At the beginning of my career (The Dog Who Knew Too Much is my 27th novel) I went in for long A-Z outlines. Then, when I’d finally worked up the nerve to begin, I’d find at around C, for example, that a character would blurt something unexpected, or I’d see the whole affair from a different angle, knocking D to Z right off the rails. Now I don’t use outlines. I make sure I know: the beginning; the engine that drives the story (not the same thing as the plot); a few big scenes along the way (Chet and the stolen elephant Peanut alone in the desert in To Fetch A Thief, say); and that the story is resolvable in a believable way; and then I begin.

Another thing that draws me to Chet is his short, sometimes non-existent, attention span. The solving of crimes in detective fiction depends on following links in a chain. Chet can’t do that, of course, so setting him loose in a traditional P.I. story guarantees it will be challenging for the writer, but if done right different from everything else out there. It’s like playing classic themes on an unusual instrument. Chet’s an unreliable narrator, of course, and that’s something I’ve been drawn to in the past. There’s Nick Petrov, the P.I. in Oblivion, after his brain hemorrhage, to take one example. But Oblivion, like all of my novels prior to Chet and Bernie, was written in third-person close. I’d written just one single short story in the first person but I knew Chet would work best that way.

I’m the kind of writer who stares out the window a lot while I’m working. We live beside a salt marsh and we’ve always had dogs, and they’ve always played outside. So I’ve been observing dogs for years. Not in any organized way, more an osmosis kind of thing, but some part of my mind, while other parts wrestled with whatever was on the screen, must have been processing canine life. Maybe for that reason, Chet’s narrative voice just seems to flow out of me. Or has there been some DNA mix-up in my ancestral past?

Now for the crazy part. I’ve learned from Chet to be more upbeat in life, the way he is. How can a fictional character that comes out of your own mind give you something that wasn’t there before? Thanks to Chet, I’m not going to spend a second worrying about that.

Dog On It by Spencer Quinn

I rarely come across a book that I finish in two sittings. Dog On It by Spencer Quinn is one of those books. I had an ARC that came highly recommended, but for some reason it was buried in my TBR stack. I'm so glad I dug it out. This is a book for mystery lovers, and especially for mystery and dog lovers. The book is narrated by Chet, a dog who didn't quit complete his police training. "I'd been the best leaper in K-9 class, which had led to all the trouble in a way I couldn't remember exactly, although blood was involved". Bernie, a low-key P.I. is his person/partner. Let me tell you right now, though, that this is not a cute cozy novel. Chet is a wonderful narrator who assists his partner, but not in a super-hero way. The mystery is good, the writing is superb, and Chet is a dog after my own heart. He's easily distracted in a doggy way by smells, words, and phrases. He has a hard-boiled voice and is prone to mischief.. well he's a dog, after all. Both Chet and Bernie are flawed in a way that we love our hard-boiled heroes.

The mystery itself is quite good with all the clues and plotting right on. This book will make you think and laugh. I'm looking forward to the further adventures of Chet and Bernie. Coming from Atria Books (Simon and Schuster) in February 2009.

What a great way to start the year!