Cornwell, Patricia. At Risk. New York: Berkley Books, 2007.

The other week in class discussion on the Eggers novel, I defended big-R Reading of all kinds from a classmate who seemed determined to differentiate between “good reading” and “bad reading.” It’s probably best to recreate the scene as dialogue. It’s probably best not to apologize for the pomp that may permeate my half of the dialogue. It’s how I talk, really, but I don’t know how else to go about it anymore:

ME: I think with, like, the book’s project, I guess, of y’know ‘getting the word out’ and all, it’s important that it be a novel. That it like be presented as a novel. Because I think there’s, like, something very vital about the way a novel forces us outside of our own, like, consciousness and into someone else’s. I think the book kinda ties in with the Wallace that way, or at least the Wallace essay [on TV that argues brilliantly for the way TV of 1980 and after has endlessly rewarded our selfish, solipsistic habits]. I think there’s something very vital and important about the way novels give us that.

HER: I don’t think it’s as easy as just reading a novel makes you a better person because you have to sympathize with someone else. There are a lot of really bad novels out there that ask the reader to sympathize with fake people, or characters taken straight out of movies, and there’s nothing sympathetic that people really get out of that.

ME: No but I think they do. I don’t think there’s any value here in, like, differentiating between good or bad novels. I think the novel as form works because it has to, um, ‘employ’ point of view, and these days, at least, that point of view is ... it’s not, like, omniscient. It’s tied to one person, and that person is not the reader. And it’s the only medium out there that does it, really. Nonfiction doesn’t. Movies don’t. I think this.... I think, like, I think the novel. This, I guess, is the value of the novel today.

Yes, I speak with finger-quotes. Yes, I’m feigning my self-deprecation.

At any rate, reading Patricia Cornwell makes me want to renege on my statement, O classmate. I was in the Reno airport a few hours ago and had nothing to read and needed after four days immersed in all aspects of the stuff to take a break from taxidermy, so I went to the book vendor near my gate and—what a lark! what a plunge!—bought a mass-market paperback. My rationale was that they’re perfect for passing the time in airports. That they’re made and marketed for this very specific activity.

I s’pose it passed the time, but what a dreadfully boring and terribly written book. I’m not going to bother ripping it apart for its lousy sentences and flat, silly language. That’s an element of genre I’ve no right mucking with. What I will bother ripping the book apart for is its action. Win, the hero of the novel, spends most of his time on the phone, or sitting down at tables or sofas talking with various characters. There’s one murder early on in the book, but this is done in self-defense, and the person killed is a complete non-entity. That’s it. The climax comes about when people have gone through a sufficient amount of old files in basements and storage rooms and can now put together all the clues. We don’t even get to watch the murderer(s) get arrested. I’ve never been so bored. I’ve read student stories that were more compelling.

My question now is this: why do people come back to this kind of crap? Not poorly written crap. People needing the Novel’s Gift of Displaced Point of View don’t need to get it in a package bowed and ribboned with gorgeous prose. Why do people come back to dull, actionless crap? The high, tense drama of paperwork?

Reading this book is like watching an episode of House (loathsome show!). I’ve seen only one, and this is how the plot goes:

1. Character is admitted to the hospital with confusing symptoms.
2. House guesses one possible diagnosis and demands his minions perform some kind of test.
3. The test turns up negative. House, et al., are puzzled.
4. Repeat nos. 2 and 3 several times, with one of the tests going drastically wrong, threatening to kill the patient.
5. The third or so test finally works and the patient ends up okay.

It, yes, hurts to sit through. But people are eating that show up, if my semi-regular scans of TV ratings are correct. Something is going on in popular suspense entertainment where people are being held in suspense by the most paltry things: diagnostic tests, phone conversations, court depositions. The problem isn’t that these, in real life, are all very dull procedures. The problem isn’t forced, faux drama. The problem seems to be a lack of imagination. The problem seems to be a widespread unease with real forms of danger.

A simple formula I took from somewhere: drama = desire + danger. What does it say about contemporary audiences when sufficient forms of danger are found in tests going wrong, or old files never turning up? How is one to be optimistic about this? Why do I insist on ending posts with questions?

The answer is easy: questions allow one to dodge the tricky practice of thinking up answers.