Thomas Harris's Genius Geniuses

If you’ve seen the film Red Dragon, you’re at least briefly aware of Will Graham’s story. Like most films, the source material is much different than the screen version but it still gives you a cursory understanding of the story.  And like most of us (I suspect), I’ve seen more of Thomas Harris’s stories on the screen than I have on the page.  In fact, Red Dragon is the first of his stories I’ve seen on the page and I found it to be as complex and compelling as its characters. 

In this novel, there are many things Harris does exceptionally well but none compare to his characters.  From a writer’s perspective, characters are what we love to create but  it is difficult to create characters that readers will love.  And after reading Harris’s Red Dragon, I recognize he is a master at it.  His hero, Will Graham is not your typical hero, which is ironically typical of heroes yet this one still stands out.  Will’s neurotic and easily manipulated.  He’s also a genius law enforcement investigator.  Dr. Alan Bloom describes Will as having pure empathy (almost a super power in this context) in which Will is able to empathize with a person so much that he sees through their eyes with near perfect understanding.  As you would guess because of this gift (or curse) he has a proven track record of finding serial killers.  While his ability sounds a little farfetched, Harris presents Will in such a way that we not only believe it, but it’s as fascinating to us as it is to the characters in the novel.  And that’s where Harris’s true talent lies.  I don’t know how many stories I’ve read where the author forces a character on the reader and tries to make them feel or believe certain things about them.  They might tell us he’s a genius inventor, or the cool kid at school, and so we’re supposed to accept it but it’s not supported in the text.  It’s the author’s intrusion and not genuine.  And yet Harris never falls into that.  He does tell us how to think about certain characters, but where other authors fail, Harris delivers.  From the very beginning we are told Will Graham is (or was) the best at what he does: solving strange murders.  And while that’s a little on the cliché side, the next scene we see it for ourselves and instantly I’m a believer.  Harris writes his genius characters as geniuses; something many authors fall short on.  From Will’s first walkthrough of the Leeds house, and the way he reconstructs the crime, almost becoming the killer himself, I believe it.  He walks through the house, reconstructing the murders with stark clarity, reliving them as if he was there.  He thinks about the bodies and immediately picks up on two fingerprints the police may have missed since the rest of the scene was clean.  Nothing about Will’s investigating or character is logical.  It’s easy for a writer to show a smart character, especially a cop, by having them discover aspects of crime first by jumping on logical conclusions but that’s not what Harris does.  His murders, and characters, are complex and I’m left as impressed as the characters in the novel.

Dolarhyde is much the same way.  The villain of the novel, Dolarhyde is clearly a psychopath.  And like most psychos he believes he is right, that he is above other people, that his murders are creating something that other people are too base to appreciate.  He compares himself to Michaelangelo in that his murders, and the films and pictures he takes of them, are art of the highest caliber.  While disturbing, it is believable that someone could be so disillusioned they could slip into that mentality.  And again, Harris could get off with showing us the killer in certain lights and we’d be fine with it.  We’re not supposed to like the killer so we expect not to.  But Harris gives Dolarhyde the same treatment as Will.  He gives us all of Francis.  We see his meticulous genius perhaps even more than Will (and from many different povs), as well as his human and demonic sides.  Though one of my biggest issues with the novel is from his back-story (I think it was both illuminating and interesting, but largely unnecessary), Dolarhyde, like Will, is both weak and strong.  He’s publicly weak as Francis fears ridicule about his physical appearance.  Yet, he’s privately strong, both physically and mentally.  His coworkers know him as a quiet, timid man and he is.  He wears his work goggles at all times at the office, even in the cafeteria so people are not able to glimpse his deformity.  He wears masks.  He is at times Francis Dolarhyde, the quiet darkroom photography tech, and at times the Red Dragon, a deranged serial killer.  Both (they almost become separate characters) are shown with such vivid, interesting detail we not only believe his character, but we are left like Will, empathizing with it as well.  He’s a genius in the way he constructs his crimes.  And his interaction with Hannibal Lecter is integral yet almost a side note but it is still presented as two geniuses corresponding and we believe it.  The characters, like us, scramble to figure out what their letters mean to each other and when they discover the truth, like them, we are left in shock and awe.  Each one of Dolarhyde’s murders are masterfully written into his character, and are masterfully written crimes. 

And as a side note, while this is of no fault or achievement of Harris’s, I enjoyed how small Hannibal Lecter’s role was in this story.  Of all of Harris’s interesting, complex characters, Lecter is the one that will stand the test of time.  He has become synonymous with villains-you-just-hate-to-love and I have to admit it was refreshing to see that Harris’s character had humble roots in his stories.  I don’t mean humble as in Lecter’s background, but his presence.  His cameo, while integral, was brief and does not leave a long lasting impression, which only speaks to Harris’s ability to create compelling, complex characters as the series continues.      

Fear of Monsters Makes Monsters

Stephen Dobyns’s Church Of Dead Girls is not a novel I’ve heard of.  And after being forced to read it, I realize it’s not a novel I would’ve read of my own volition.  Other than the first few pages, the novel lacks any real scenes until well over three fourths of the book.  But after finishing the novel, I'm so glad I did.  

The story is told through the “tellings” (and I mean “tellings.”  Dobyns is proof that the idiom “show, don’t tell” is a flimsy rule at best.  And it’s a rule that’s meant to be broken) of a high school biology teacher who we know very little about.  Instead, the narrator informs us of everyone else in the town at great detail.  Most chapters, especially the first hundred or so pages, are character bios.  We learn character histories, friendships, courtships, all of which fleshes out Aurelius, NY to be a living, breathing place.  The town’s description is given briefly in the opening pages but through each exploration of the various residents, Dobyns is really fleshing out the small town of Aurelius until the town itself becomes a character of its own. 

The story, while told through gossip the biology teacher has picked up, focuses on the disappearance and murders of three teenage girls.  The murders are committed by an individual, a “monster,” who preys on young females.  But what Dobyns sets up is a dynamic in which the town itself is nearly just as bad as the monster that it bred.  The town is small, sheltered.  To Aurelius, the problems and issues of the outside world are just that: outside.  Outsiders aren’t trusted.  The people are, to use Chihani’s word, “ignorant.”  And it could be due to this ignorance, this “group thinking” a sheltered environment breeds, that create a monster as real as the one in flesh and blood. 

The first murder of the book (Janice) occurs years before the disappearance of the three girls.  But after this murder goes unsolved, the town turns their back on it.  They are so comfortable in their ways, they almost refuse to acknowledge that it occurred after a time.  It’s only when a young girl disappears, and then two more, that the town is forced to recognize what is happening.  And like mob-rule, they turn to outsiders first.  This is really when Aurelius, the character, shows her fangs.  This is demonstrated in the persecution, and eventual death, of Chihani.  Ironically, it is the town’s ignorance that kills Chihani.  The person of Aurelius is born, with each resident acting as a single synapse in the cognitive network.  The same goes for Paul Leimbach.  The police, while against mob-rule, are few in number and essentially powerless to stop the riotous Aurelius from lashing out in anger.  The Friends go on a witch-hunt in which any they claim are guilty, are guilty until proven innocent.  Even when the killer is discovered to be Donald Malloy, the town still defends the men who attacked and destroyed Leimbach’s house – a man who was wrongfully accused and attacked.  The narrator states that they claimed, “they were in the right.”  Aurelius had deemed him guilty, even for a few short moments, and therefore he will always remain guilty in her eyes.

But Dobyns doesn’t end it with the death of the killer.  That would be logical.  That would be easy.  Instead, he takes it a step further.  He goes on about how the mistrustful, riotous Aurelius character will always remain inside its residents, its synapses, even after the “monster” is dead.  Or even after they leave.  We discover that the monster is never truly dead to those that lived through it.  The town has experienced and done things it can’t undo.  The residents will forever remain distrustful of each other.  Their sense of oneness is shattered.  Their own, someone they trusted, had turned out to be a monster.  And in the closing lines, our nice biology teacher of a narrator exposes himself to be a bit on the monstrous side as well.  Donald Malloy had taken the left hands of every victim, including himself.  The narrator confesses that he took Malloy’s hand from the funeral home and places it among his own specimens.  And in this confession, Dobyns leaves us with a chilling notion that in perhaps destroying monsters, its not a far leap to become one yourself:  

“For me it’s a reminder of what is always there, of the longings that lie within people, the longings we hide within ourselves…I think of it as my private teacher…I try to think what those fingers felt and I scare myself: the necks of the tree girls, their tenderness” (Dobyns 388).  

No Gumption: On Robert Bloch's Psycho

I will start this by prefacing that I’m not a huge reader of horror.  In fact, some of the “horror” I have read, I wouldn’t even consider horror at all.  I think of them more along the lines of dark fantasy.  I’m talking about Stephen King’s Carrie and The Shining.  And I feel same way about Robert Bloch’s Psycho.  Now I don’t think of it as dark fantasy, but I do feel like it misses the mark to be constituted as “horror.”

Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed the novel.  I thought Bloch’s prose, and the fact that he put us in the shoes of the villain who didn’t know he was the villain for much of the novel, was incredibly effective.  Even if Hitchcock forever popularized this story, and everyone who reads it now, probably already is aware of the twist at the end, it was still a really refreshing read.  And Norman Bate’s characterization and relationship with his mother, are fascinating to watch play out.  The way he projects his misgivings and failures onto others that comes together in a climactic revelation at the end was masterfully done.  But I still don’t think of it as horror.  I found it more interesting, almost a character study, than horrifying.  And this is due to the fact that Norman, and his relationship with Mother, outshine what the actual story is about: catching the killer of Mary Crane.    

For instance, each murder, really the catalysts for every major plot point, are committed very briefly on the page.  The first murder, Mary, is committed because Norman projects onto her that she is teasing and judging him as he watches her through the crack in the office wall.  In his head, he blames her (as killers are want to do), and because of that Mother steps in and finishes the job.  But her actual death, the scene where she is actually attacked, is so brief.  It’s almost washed over.  Now this, in the context of the story, is due to Norman’s psychosis.  He has a split personality, so Norman blacks out, and Mother does the deed.  But as a writing technique, it makes the crimes themselves much less important.  It’s Norman, and his relationship with his mother, and all of what he does to protect her, that drives the story.  Sure, Mary’s sister and fiancé’s quest to find the whereabouts of Mary play a part, and the end of the novel obviously results because they complete their quest, but for me, that was only fueling the fire of Norman Bate’s characterization.  We see a distinct character arc from him over the course of the novel as each crime, makes him grow and strengthen.  And each stride for him is only achieved through his “interactions” with mother.  It isn’t the murders.  They help him, but its the taking ground from Mother that makes him grow.  And that is where the novel is.  

From the very first scene when Norman’s mother walks in on him reading, we are already locked in to who Norman is.  We see his meekness, and through his mother’s toxic berating comments, we understand how he got to be this way.  Just a brief snippet of the scene: 

           

“I make you sick, eh? Well, I think not.  No, boy.  I don’t make you sick.  You make yourself sick”

           

“That’s the real reason you’re still over her on this side of the road, isn’t it, Norman? Because the truth is that you haven’t any gumption.  Never had any gumption, did you, boy?

            

“Never had the gumption to leave home.  Never had the gumption to go out and get yourself a job, or join the army, or even find yourself a girl—“

            

“You wouldn’t let me!”

           

“That’s right, Norman.  I wouldn’t let you.  But if you were half a man, you’d have gone your own way” (Bloch 6-7).

What characterization!  This all occurs in the first scene.  These are the first lines of dialogue in the novel and what lines they are.  Bloch explodes these two characters to life and already we know exactly who they are.  They fly off the page.  Yet the crimes, each murder, the true reason (or reasons) the story takes place, is mostly washed over.  His grows every time a crime is committed, but that’s only because he feels emboldened to finally stand up to his mother.  Because he feels he is helping her by cleaning up her messes.  So, in effect, the crimes are essential but not the reason for his growth.  It’s Norman and his mother’s give, and eventual take, that are the meat of the novel.    

And that’s why I never felt horrified, or even dreaded, the pre-crime build up, or post-crime clean up.  It was Norman and his mother that were the most interesting.  For his is the one constant viewpoint throughout the novel.  Each chapter, Bloch reveals just a little more about their relationship until, at the end, we discover, that (spoiler) he had killed his mother and her lover and had been projecting her onto himself ever since.  And then once we discover that, it’s up to us to play back each scene and pinpoint all of the times that his mother was there.  And then we realize that he never did actually describe his mother.  She just always spoke, and it’s through her dialogue, and interactions with Norman that bring out her characterization.  Bloch lets us fill out her physical description.  And then we take it a step further and realize Norman makes his mother out to be an all-knowing, almost benevolent, woman.  She knows he was watching Mary in the shower, she spies on him in the swamp—we think they are just so close that it’s almost as if she can read his mind.  And we believe it.  And then at the end we discover the truth.  And it’s that discovery, that realization that their relationship was so well done that it existed on two planes: 1. in reality since we believe she is actual flesh and blood; and 2. in his head since we discover that she’s actually been dead the entire time, and not only did Norman have the rest of the world fooled that she was alive, he had fooled himself as well.  And it’s this that make this not only a great novel, but make them the driving force of this novel. 

So is that the reason this is horror?  Is it horrifying to be put in the shoes of a killer that is completely wrong in every sense of the word, and root for him because he’s just that compelling of a character?