A Further Discussion on Expectations

BENJAMIN LEROY

A few weeks ago, I had the good fortune of being interviewed by Claire Kirch, the Midwest correspondent for Publishers Weekly. What was supposed to be a fifteen minute conversation ended up stretching over an hour.

The article is in this week’s Publishers Weekly (July 21, 2013) and can be read here.

One of the things Claire and I discussed was the evolution of Tyrus Books’ publishing strategy, as it becomes less singularly focused on crime fiction. In some ways, that change has actually been around for a long time. Scott O’Connor’s award-winning novel, Untouchable (Tyrus, 2011), does not center around a murder. It was—and I am embarrassed on some level to admit this—late in the process with Untouchable when I realized it was not a crime novel. It was a heavy book that matched some of the noir sensibilities of our crime fiction offerings, but, ultimately, was without crime.

From the Publishers Weekly article—

“LeRoy said he decided to expand beyond crime fiction primarily because of the recent spate of shootings occurring inside schools and workplaces, from Newtown, Conn., to Minneapolis. “I look at what we’re doing, what we’re saying. What are we putting out there in the public consciousness?” he told PW during a telephone interview. “I’ve always been fascinated with how fiction is a reflection of the times we live in. It’s something I’ve wrestled with: if what we’re publishing, if what we’re putting out there, contributes to this gratuitous violence.” That conflict is also reflected in LeRoy’s personal life: he has begun giving books, art supplies, even a plane ticket, to people who respond to his Twitter and blog posts. LeRoy started the practice to be “a positive force in the world” and to provide a “counterbalance to all the darkness in the books I publish.”

 

I have always been obsessively fascinated by human nature. I have a desperate desire to understand why people do the things they do. How much of a role has the past had in shaping them? How do the unquantifiable brushes with pop culture and the 24 hour news cycle mold their views and expectations of the world we live in? For some people, it’s hard not to sit in front of all day news coverage and feel like the end is right around the next corner, the bottom of a glass, the backpack of a stranger.

But before the 24 hour news cycle, there were books.

Books have always been critical to my understanding of people. This goes back to reading the Hardy Boys novels on my father’s lap as a kid and has continued right through today in my capacity as the publisher of a small press. For me, books offer insight into the human condition and an opportunity to explore worlds outside of my own. They allow me to be everywhere, all at once.

For the past decade I have published crime fiction. If a book bears a Bleak House or a Tyrus logo, more than likely somebody on the page is going to be murdered at some point during the book and others are going to have to deal with it.

I don’t care about new CSI technology. I don’t have a thing for wise cracking cops. I don’t need the high stakes of international consequence to care. I’m not fascinated by literary violence no matter how ripped from the headlines it purports to be.

There is violence in the air. To be clear, there has always been violence in the air.

I worry.

Not in a pearl clutching, the Youth are terrible!, we’re all gonna die way. I worry that for no real good reason, we’ve allowed violence and the cynicism that follows to be the de facto expectation of contemporary life. We’ve come to expect that bad things to happen to innocent people because...well, just because.

And because of that, we expect a hook in every shiny thing. It’s hard to be optimistic or to appreciate the beauty in anything when we expect it to blow up in our faces.

I’ve spent ten years alternately embracing and feeling squeezed by my title as publisher of crime fiction. I’m proud of the literary legacy left behind—we’ve published many great books that have done what I’ve hoped they would, namely, explored the human condition. I don’t regret what’s been done, but I’d be a hypocrite and limited if I just kept doing it ad infinitum.

We must ask questions of ourselves. Always. And, when necessary, adjust our course.

Claire and I talked about that in the Publishers Weekly article. The scope of what Tyrus Books publishes might expand, but the heart will always be about capturing the honesty of the human experience. But I don’t want to be limited by expectations, especially the ones I may have put on myself ten years ago when I was trying to establish a presence.

There is a time for us to shed the cynicism of our youth, even in the face of so much constant ammunition. Now is that time, I guess, in daily steps, for me to keep the plot moving forward.

I give away books, music, art supplies, random things like airplane tickets, etc. on Twitter not because I am trying to buy redemption. I don’t believe you can offset your footprint that way.

I give away things because I want people to experience no-strings attached, too good to be true things that are true. I want the disenfranchised, the skeptics, the cynics who say, that could never happen to have to admit that happened. And I want it to be for something good, not a grim statistic like the number of bodies in a school shooting.

If our overexposure to violence, both from an entertainment platform, but also in the very real manifestation of spree killings, government sanctioned actions, individual self-destructions, and everything else that takes up space in the newspapers and police blotters gives birth to a certain type of cynicism that convinces us we’re all doomed to our own tragedies, and it, therefore, becomes a self-actualizing prophecy, I think it’s important we throw a wrench in the machine.

Because our lives are many things, but they are not single road inevitabilities.

If we can go from a neutral position to a more cynical and hardened position because of the things we see around us (and I know this to be true from personal experience and the experiences of some around me), then it stands to reason we can push the needle in the other direction. And in this case, I believe, we should push the needle in the other direction.

 

For more about me, publishing, and life in America, please visit www.benjaminleroy.com

Comments

[Sandra Cormier]

I think that exploring the minds of people who do inexplicable things might help the reader to understand why bad things happen, and how to help waylay the events that could happen in the future.

The human condition isn't an exact science and we have to keep our eyes open for the variables.

[Bryon Quertermous]

Huh, I posted something here that didn't make it through apparently. I love author like Victor Gischler and Duane Swierczynski because they handle violence the way I like it. Over the top to the point of being satire but with a baselines of optimism running through their stuff. This is why I've always enjoyed pulp fiction more than "noir" fiction. A book like The Deputy is a goofy shoot 'em up, but is also a great book about fatherhood and adult responsibilities. And the same with Duane's Charlie Hardie series.

I think violence in novels is more powerful and less dangerous than movie violence because in the hands of talented writers you see the effects of the violence. But in general I don't think violence in literature or film is harming our society as much as prejudice and petty, hard-line bickering.

For a country that seems to have lost it's middle ground, a genre that lives in the grey zone and forces compromise and challenges standard ideas of good and evil seems to be the perfect cure.

[Lynne Patrick]

Isn't crime fiction supposed to be reassuring in the face of the real-life horrors all around us? The basic premise is the triumph of good over evil, so the message is bad guys always come to a sticky end.