So I’m at the breakfast table at the California Crime Writer’s Conference two weeks ago, pondering my sliced fruit and muffin. One of the presenters, a pleasant woman who gave an interesting talk on how to put sex in your stories (her conclusion: Very carefully), sits down with me despite the fact that I have my journal open before me and I am writing that day’s entry.
People don’t respect journals. On the other hand, if I didn’t want to be bothered (she pointed out), why write in public?
Anyway, we commence talking about our various creations. She tells me about some of her books, written from the perspective of a 60-year-old Jewish woman. And yes, her book has lots of careful sex in it.
I tell her about Minerva, my woman lawyer in 1962 Sacramento. She stops me immediately.
“I’ve got one question before you continue,” she says. And I know what it is. Indeed, if Minerva ever gets published, I know that what’s coming is the question I will be asked again and again by people who want to trip me up into exposing myself as a stupid sexist man.
“How do you think you can write a novel from a woman’s perspective?” she says.
There are a dozen ways to answer this question. Here are a few:
- I am a writer. Writers write about human beings, unless they’re writing about dragons. Women are human beings. Therefore, as a writer, I write about women.
- Lots of famous writers have written about the opposite sex. J.K. Rowling wrote about a boy named Harry Potter. Agatha Christie’s great creation was Hercule Poirot, and her narrator was Captain Hastings. Dorothy Sayers‘ classic detective was Lord Peter Whimsey. Men have also written in the voices of women. My favorite is Alan Bradley’s Flavia De Luce, in the wonderful books about that 11-year-old girl in love with chemistry and mystery.
- Hey, did Melville have to be a whale to write Moby Dick?
- I am an arrogant jerk of a man who thinks he knows what women want.
What I ended up telling her was the truth: My narrator is not Minerva but her male private investigator Carson Robinson.
“Ah,” she said, as if I had somehow passed a test.
Truth is, had she written a novel narrated by a man, I would not have thought twice about it. Indeed, one of the books I picked up at the conference was The King’s Fool, a mystery narrated by Henry VIII’s court jester, Will Somers. Written by a woman.
(And a very good book which features far more sex than I have ever written into any of my books.)
You see where I’m going, dear reader. Our society has entered a phase where writers are no longer allowed to imagine themselves as anything but who they are. If I were to write a novel from the perspective of a Native American, I would be accused of “cultural appropriation.” Never mind that one of the great mystery writers, Tony Hillerman, featured two Navajo detectives in his great novels.
Truth is, I would not write a novel in a voice that I didn’t hear in my head, a voice I could trust. a voice I was familiar with. I have, indeed, written a novel or two in the voice of a woman. But they were women I knew pretty well.
Oh well. For now I am shielded by my canny decision to have Carson narrate the novels. Anyway, I wouldn’t have Minerva voice the stories; she has to remain somewhat mysterious.
As for myself, I have no excuse. I am not mysterious. I am ridiculous. As is Mr. Robinson. Which is why I capture his voice so well.
Mark Bruce, Writer 