Khanh Ho is writing the first Vietnamese American Detective Fiction ever. Why? Because being the first is a power trip. Like what you read? Share, comment, subscribe.
My wife is my bullshit detector. She’s my worst critic and greatest champion. And we do everything together–reading and writing and dreaming. We’re kind of codependent. I totally trust her judgment.
We also read books together…not at the same time. First, I’ll read a book. Then, she’ll read it. We pass books between us. This is a unique part of our relationship—special and casual. Right now, since I’m writing a mystery novel, we are on a suspense, thriller, action, mystery extravaganza. We don’t read anything else.
I like to read on the couch, lying down; my wife, on the elliptical machine in the gym. As it turns out, this is the perfect place to read a mystery—and to judge it. K– has an hour each day to work herself up into a sweat. She doesn’t like to stick things into her ear. She hates the boob tube. Books are THE way she gets through the experience…which otherwise is as fun as watching corn grow.
To enjoy a good read on the elliptical, you have to get your mitts on a certain kinds of book: books with strong story-lines, compelling narratives, plots. Things have to happen. Gore is good. Violence is welcome. When your heart is beating in your ear on the elliptical, you need to feel the linear movement of traditional narrative—always unfolding, always propelling you forward, always progressing toward a satisfying, orgasmic ending.
This makes total sense. I spent three years backpacking throughout the third world and what I realized is that artsy books are terrible for travel. Why? Because these kinds of books are purposely designed not to move forward; they hardly have any plot (because plot is bourgeois); they don’t have action (because they favor psychological interiority); they don’t have much gore (because gore is gratuitous). Reading artsy stuff—stuff that I would have enjoyed at home—was terrible, painful. Torture.
It seems logical: you want a narrative that moves forward, while you too are moving forward on the bus. In India, I brought a backpack full of about twenty books that were thematic to the journey. Each was hand-selected for an investigation into the country’s politics and culture. BAD IDEA. WORST IDEA EVER. DON’T DO IT! I started off the journey in Rajasthan with Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses—a massive tome that should have given me hours of reading pleasure. After all, he’s an acclaimed author!
Guess what? It was the most painful experience ever—like having constipation and trying to pass a stool. It was so hard to get through the book; I’m proud to say I got through the book; this is not a glowing recommendation; it felt like a death march. The book just doesn’t have a lot of action. And so it can’t hold your attention on a chicken bus with the sights and sounds and smells of India. How can an artsy fartsy book compete with a leathery, naked sadhu or a transvestite extortionist wedding singer or a cow on the road?
If nothing is happening, especially, you begin to feel disconnected to that sense of movement that is essential to the zeitgeist of a journey. So, the popular book–hands-down–while I was traveling was Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code. You saw so many translations of that book floating around–bootlegs, too–and it was the most common sight on a train or a bus. The most typical image from that period: the spectacle of a grizzled Israeli ex-soldier backpacker (Israelis are everywhere when you travel) with their crazy hippie get-up reading a Hebrew version of the Da Vinci Code.
I’m a snob. I didn’t read it while on the road. But I did read it when I got home. And it sucked me in for the first 100 pages. No wonder everybody read this—that was the thought pulsating through my head. I felt stupid and left out. There’s a plot twist every chapter. My brothers and sisters used to play this trick on me as a kid: whenever I went to bed early, they would tell me in the morning that I missed out—that they had ordered pepperoni pizzas. I always believed them. I always felt left out. I always felt sad. I grew up in an insatiably cruel, cruel family.
In my first blog—the blog announcing my intentions of writing the first Vietnamese American Detective novel with a Vietnamese American detective written by a Vietnamese American—I said that I was doing so for one reason: to reach out to those on the road, like me, who were trying to get a good read. So, my wife’s reading mysteries on the elliptical is my way of staying true to the experience on the road. If she hates a book, I know it will be unreadable on a chicken bus in Peru or a boat on a border crossing in Laos. I always think about whether or not K– will chuck my book as she works herself up into a lather on the elliptical. My wife has great taste. And she’s got a pretty nice ass, too.
Khanh – I think it helps writers immensely when they read all kinds of different books. Stream-of-consciousness, plot-driven, Beat, Gothic, all sorts of books. This broadens the writer’s perspective. In fact I think even reading a book that one doesn’t think is well-written and doesn’t enjoy is worth the effort. Not that it’s fun, but it can teach one a lot about what works in writing. And there’s nothing wrong with a writer deciding, ‘I don’t like that approach to telling a story; I’m going to do ___ instead.’
I also think it’s neat that you and your wife experience books together. Each of you can benefit from the other one’s perspective. And I think one can get a really interesting different angle on a novel by talking about it with someone else who’s read it – someone one trusts.
You are so right, Margot. Variety is important; it broadens; it improves; it deepens. I’m one of those people who reads excessively, primarily because I spent so much time in academia as a literary historian…that line of work requires an open mind because you’re reading all sorts of stuff: pamphlets, letters, marginalia. My idea of a good time was sitting in a basement archive with a box of papers. This means, though, that I have no filter.
I love my wife because she is brutal in the way that I can not be. If she hates it, the book is in the trash can. She will not waste her work-out time with it. It’s good to measure myself up to that level of impatience!
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Margot–as usual, you put it so well, so eloquently. I’ve gotten to the point in my reading life where I am much more aware of the job the reader has to perform in the act of receiving any work of literature: to remain open, to glean like the thief in the orchard whatever harvest lands before one’s feet. I too am glad that there are people making honest efforts toward representing underknown experiences like those inhabited by refugees. Not much is out there that isn’t pure commercial product–sensational and vulgar. So Audrey’s writing is quite welcome.