Trevanian Dear X:
I still recall with affection our chats about the fundamental nature of life, art, verse, and the nature of man; and I wish we had had more than three hours to cover these topics. My bulk memory of your fine city consists of chats at bars with working men and bright young writers, the latter of whom possessed a combination sadly uncommon amongst the young: seriousness of purpose, and celerity of wit. It is a scar of youth to take one's self too seriously and to play personal and largely confected tragic roles. They tend to attack with a club tasks that call for a rapier. Not so with the young Dutch writers I met, and for this relief much thanks to the ambience of creative Amsterdam. (Creative Amsterdam is, of course, a very small city hidden in and threaded through the streets of cultural/commercial Amsterdam; but it is not so small a secret city as is Creative Paris, for instance, or Creative New York).
The above parenthetical may be treated as optional reading.
So, X! You ask me to write a few words for Maatstaf on the general subject of the Crime Novel or the Thriller Novel. I would be delighted to do this because I am most supportive of the kind of thing Maatstaf is doing. My problem is that I don't know anything about the Crime Novel or the Thriller Novel. With the exception of Simenon, I have never read either. And, although I am an academic and therefore used to holding forth on subjects beyond my knowledge, I wouldn't dare do so on the pages of Maatstaf. What I will do is to share with you a few rather random thoughts on the functions and construction of the Thriller. If you choose, you could lift them out and print them up, or even print up my letter in toto - if you're of a capricious frame of mind. As for the author's fee; I suggest you hold it in hand until the next terribly serious young writer comes into your office. Bring him to lunch; get him drunk; and suggest that he give up writing and take up an honest profession.
How does the thriller fit in to the large family of literature? Uncomfortably. On the one hand, it is rightly regarded as the lees of creative literature. On the other hand, it is read religiously by many of the crispest intellects in the world. It is to literature what glass-blowing is to architecture, or humming to classic music. It is anodyne literature; aspirin art; more heroin than hero. This is not a pejorative criticism; it is simply a functional description. And, indeed, I am not at all sure that - in a frustrating and baffling society such as ours - the man who discovered aspirin did not contribute more vitally than did the man who discovered anti-polio vaccine.
The Thriller functions in the realm of How and Who, while grander literature tends to deal with What and Why. When one constructs (should I say confects?) a thriller, he first dreams up a bit of booty - something to be chased after. It doesn't really matter what the booty is: the microfilm, the formula, the new weapon, the dangerous man - the What is relatively unimportant. I personally prefer that the booty be something like a formula for reducing dandruff, rather than atomic secrets, but that's because I prefer artifice to significance and charm to import. At all events, the booty is established, and it must be got at either through cleverness or through daring physical activity. Both, if you have the sapce and time. Once we have the What lightly established, the whole game lies in the arenae of How and Who. To sell well just now, the How should be baroque and involute and should carry
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