The Edgar's

Kvetching about the Edgar nominees is a common pastime in the bleak midwinter. Usually it is the so-called "cozy" writers complaining that only the "dark" stuff is nominated. This is basically true, because apparently the judges don't think quilting, tea, and cats constitute serious literature but rather pretty-to-think escapist meanderings that can be awarded at the Malice Domestic convention.

I am of two minds. The "Dark" novels can be very dark indeed, and sometimes one needs escapist stories, but all media mirrors our times,. The movies nominated for Oscars this year are also dark, except for the one about the pregnant teen which escapes my fingers. Oh yes, Juno. A fantasy.

Indeed the world is dark and when is the last time you heard a sweet romantic ballad, like, say, "Bus Stop?"

The Bhutto assassination and the Iraq war and global warming are the world we inhabit, and if fiction writes that large upon the page, well, so be it.

The fifties are gone, and along with them the bomb shelters and the air raid sirens and the big bands never did return. We simply have to soldier on, realizing our literature including popular and genre fiction will hold up a mirror to our times, and even a distorted fun-house mirror still shows an image. What we may yearn for and what we have to live with.

Yesterday the Boston Globe ran an article on how couples had been ripped off to the tune of $5,000 and more for prepaying for wedding photographs to a company that went belly up. I felt a mild sympathy, but mostly I wondered who in his right mind would spend $5,000 for wedding photographs that will end up amusing kids and grandkids who will laugh at the clothes, the hair, the dresses, the silliness. And who gets the photos when the couple splits?

If you think about weddings, and McMansions and helicopter parents and $3,000 handbags and $1500 shoes, how can writing not be dark? We look in the mirror and don't like what we see.
Our novels reflect our lives and times, and the times are dark, times are generally dark and our writing reflects that darkness.

Onward,