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by Joel Dane
I published with the Big Five for twenty years. I’d been raised with a certain kind of commercial fiction, and that’s all I understood. That’s all I gave myself permission to write. Then, little by little, with the guidance of novelists who’d cast convention aside, I allowed myself to write my Passion Project—which is being published by a small press that is equally passionate.
Looking back, four books in particular made me ask, “Are writers allowed to do that?” (And I’m including a scene from a crime drama because it so perfectly, visually, illustrates my point.)
Our Tragic Universe by Scarlett Thomas.
This is my most-reread novel, a story about story (and storylessness) that made me ask, “What is encouraged in narrative? What is demanded? What is possible?”
Duplex by Kathryn Davis.
Beautiful, bizarre, sinister, gorgeous, heartbreaking, and simply UNACCEPTABLE. Who even allowed this to happen? I love it.
Gun, with Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem.
This was my gateway drug, a noirish detective novel with evolved animals and government-sponsored drugs, set in a world in which asking questions is illegal.
https://www.amazon.com/Gun-Occasional-Music-Jonathan-Lethem/dp/0151364583/
Samuel Johnson Is Indignant by Lydia Davis.
Like all of Davis’s collections this is a series of lightning strikes by a writer who is terrifyingly unique—and funny as hell.
Finally, to cast convention aside, Episode 8 of the BBC/Netflix crime drama, Giri/Haji.
This is an excellent-if-not-groundbreaking thriller about a Tokyo detective in London … until suddenly, in episode 8, there’s a breathtaking sequence like nothing I’ve ever seen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giri/Haji
Joel Dane is the author of twenty-five novels in four genres with five pen names. He’s also the author of one novel, The Ragpicker, which is exactly the book he wanted to write.
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