Grand Delusions

In the 1920s, grand houses were a dime-a-dozen.

Well, not quite, but there were several. Henry Ford built Fairlane, his residence in Dearborn. The house, a cross between Frank Lloyd Wright’s prairie style and Romanesque, is a modest 33,000 square feet on 1300 acres. Alfred Wilson and Matilda Dodge Wilson, the widow of auto pioneer John Dodge, built the Tudor style Meadowbrook Hall on 1400 acres in what is now Rochester Hills. At 88,000 square feet, it is the fourth largest private residence in America, dwarfing the White House. Horace, John’s brother built an even more grand house, Rose Terrace, in Grosse Pointe.

Edsel Ford, Henry’s son, along with his wife Eleanor, also built a house in Grosse Pointe along Lake St. Clair. At 20,000 square feet on 87 acres, it is more modest than many of its contemporaries. Being a second generation auto magnate, I suppose he had less to prove. The house, built in English Cotswold style, was furnished by gutting half the castles in England. It was furnished with first-class artwork, including works by Cézanne and a Renoir. It is also more human-scale. It is a house I could see myself living in. 

Fat chance.

These houses were all built out a little from the industrial hub of the city. A generation earlier, their predecessors were built in the Boston-Edison District, within walking distance of the old Chrysler complex in Highland Park, and not far from the original Ford plant on Woodward. I guess they figured that with their new automobiles, they didn’t need to walk to work anymore.

These extravagant excrescences are not out of line with the actions of their predecessors. The men that turned America into an industrial powerhouse after the Civil War – the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Carnegies and DuPonts – did the same thing. The ultimate tier of grandeur, populated with Biltmore (Vanderbilt), Winterthur (DuPont), and Oheka Castle (Kahn, a New York financier) reflect a similar need to reflect their owner’s status as gold medal winners in the American Dream competition.

In my stories, the dela Mothes, heirs of Antoine dela Mothe Cadillac, have similar pretensions. The family owns five square miles along the northern boundary of (fictional) Paris, Michigan, where they have built chateaux to rival the finest homes in the country.

While Antoine’s estate fits into the classical mold of the real homes above, his brother Charles’ 150,000 square foot house, sheathed in polished black granite, conveys his sinister pact with the devil. A fresco depicting an industrial scene in the ceiling of the dining room is reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno. You get the picture.

Some other characters, including the Firenze family, live in palatial digs on a lesser scale, but the imagery is a new social class well beyond humble working-class Frank Healy’s imagination.

Those people have it made and you, I and Frank should know our places: nowhere near the head of the table. Maybe in the scullery. 

Grab an apron and get to work.

Noir, the New Black

Among the myriad forms of crime fiction, Noir remains a perennial favorite. The genre rose to prominence in the 1940s, when writers like Raymond Chandler introduced their tough talking private eyes to pulp fiction. Noir shines a harsh, unblinking light on sex, violence and society. This is a dark view of the world, hence, Noir. Incidentally, “pulp” refers to the cheap, yellowed acidy paper used to print paperbacks more than the mass-produced fiction found there. Philip Marlowe, made famous by Humphrey Bogart in movies like The Big Sleep, epitomizes everything that makes Noir popular.

While purists like to distinguish between “hardboiled” and Noir, I suspect the distinction has largely disappeared since the salad days of pulp fiction in the forties and fifties. I’ve felt for some time that Noir was a genre whose time had passed, but I’m beginning to change my mind.

Noir usually features a hard, socially isolated protagonist, usually a detective, who has an eye for beautiful women and a magnetic attraction to violence. He usually ends up in bed with someone over the course of the story, and almost always gets beat up or shot before bringing the bad people to justice. 

Noir is interesting in the same way of black-and-white film. Shadows, focus and lighting were more critical to the storytelling in those old movies. In Noir stories, the subtle glances and dark details tell the story as much as the detailed descriptions and expository dialog.

While Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler defined the genre through a set of critical elements, many contemporary writers have kept the tradition alive. My problem has been that the detective as a character is someone lost in the 1950s. Robert Parker’s Spencer and Loren Estleman’s Amos Walker seem bewildered and almost lost in the 21^st century. Walker still drives a 70s vintage Oldsmobile.

It turns out, I’m wrong. The Scandinavians, of all people seem bent on reviving noir. It is somehow appropriate that noir should live on in the land of the midnight sun and endless winter nights. Stieg Larsson is largely responsible for this revival, although Henning Mankell was earlier with his angst-ridden character, Kurt Wallander. Lately, Jo Nesbø has been doing his part. His latest, Snowman, is receiving rave reviews.

I am more familiar with Larsson’s work than the others, and I can tell you it is very dark. The treatment his character Lisbet Salander receives at the hands of the antagonists and authorities is so hard to read, I wonder how anyone could bring themselves to write it, much less read. But after I got past that, he had a superb story to tell, even across three books.

So, I can only conclude that Noir is alive and well, lurking in the shadows. Whatever you do, don’t look back.

Foreshadowing Doom

Little do you know that by the bottom of this page your view of foreshadowing will be forever changed.

Alright, maybe you already know more than enough, in which case you can skip to the next blog on your list. I, however, must forge on.

Foreshadowing is a dramatic device that causes the reader to anticipate upcoming events in the narrative. It’s like prefacing a joke with, “This is really funny!” On the other hand, if something is that important to the plot, I suppose it’s a good idea to point it out. If you really don’t want your readers to miss it, by all means foreshadow.

The main problem with foreshadowing is that the most useful phrases have become clichés, as in my opening sentence. “Little did she know…” is as much of a tired cliché as “It was a dark and stormy night.” Several plot devices are available to slip past that pitfall. The critical note can be expressed differently: “As Frank composed the camera shot, Death lurked unexposed in the shadows.” It’s all there—the impending doom, our hero’s oblivion—but none of that gets into trite language.

Atmospherics can be useful, if subtle foreshadowing devices. The symbolism of a gathering storm is a common example, but strange smells can anticipate decomposing corpse, an imminent arson, or even death lurking behind cloying perfume. Sounds like a ticking clock no longer work, everything is digital, but quiet breathing, a shuffling foot or even a come hither look can anticipate further doings. Consider this: “The tall, lithe blonde captured every eye as she slithered to her table. Frank took note without a glance or pause in his tale.” We know without being told that he’s going to track her down later.

Another practical approach that takes up a few more pages is fateful preparation. In my forthcoming book, Grand Designs, Frank Healy takes track training from a race car driver. He learns how to push his Porsche to the limit. Many chapters later, he is caught in a high speed chase with his nemesis driving a much more powerful car. One chapter foreshadows the other, preparing the hero with the skills he’ll need to survive. All the while, he remains oblivious.

The last point is important in a first person narrative. The reader can only know what the narrator knows, so if he (or she) is to be surprised by a plot twist, so must the reader.

Foreshadowing is not entirely necessary. Let the reader be surprised! My only exception to that cavalier attitude is in mysteries, where the story is often a puzzle. If the solution to the puzzle is a piece lurking unrevealed in the author’s pocket which only comes out in the final chapter, readers will feel cheated and may not come back for the sequel.

You can only guess if they will.

Microcosm of America

Rochester’s recent history is like time travel. 

When I first arrived, dairy cows lived in the Great Oaks subdivision. The Paint Creek Tavern stood resolute, and across the street, the Oak gas station was not much more than a phone booth beside the railroad tracks. Railroad tracks? The divided the town along what is now the Paint Creek Trail. There are still a few mile markers if you know where to look. The Morse-Ferry Seed Farm was open fields. I don’t know if they were still in business, then. Mitzelfeld’s anchored the business district.

True, some of the icons of an earlier epoch remain.

Knapp’s Dairy Bar remains very much as it was. The Home Bakery still looks the same. Green’s Artist Supply and the Arizona Saddlery appear unchanged by the times. The Rochester Grain Elevator is still standing, although I don’t know how. I remember passing the Sign of the Black and White Cow. The Van Hoosen farm was there, too, but looked on the verge of ruin. Yates Cider Mill is a few miles out of town, but I consider it part of the town’s ambience.

Some of the buildings remain intact, but have been transformed with the rising status of the town. The D&C Dime Store has transformed twice: once to Andiamo’s  and now to Rojo. The Cooper’s Arms, while visually much the same, is now the Rochester Chop House. I think the menu is still the same. They just crossed out the old prices and doubled them. The old Library on University transformed once into Hepplewhite’s and later into Updog Yoga. The old post office has held a succession of restaurants, none of which seem to stay very long. The A&P stood vacant forever before becoming a fitness center.

Does anyone remember the Hills Theater?

I lived for a time in the neighborhood just west of St. Andrew’s Catholic Church. The houses were built just after the war. The last time I drove past, the area looked exactly the same as when I moved out.

Some things have changed dramatically. Stoney Pointe and its kin have populated the land north of what was once Parke Davis with McMansions. The Great Oaks Mall has come and gone. The Western Woolen Mill is now the Rochester Mills Beer Company. The library, post office and Park Place Hotel occupy prime locations along Paint Creek.

As I write stories set in and around Rochester, I can use these shifting times and scenic elements to anchor my readers in a specific era. If I wanted to, I could go back to the interurban era and restore the tracks down the brick Main Street.

I won’t though. I don’t remember what it was like then. It’s before my time.

Common Comma Comments

An epidemic of commas has beset writing of late.

Every sentence I read is peppered with the pesky punctuation. This disease is not confined to bad fiction and emails. Even some of the better writers seem to be infected.

Shrunk and White, a succinct guide to grammar, includes five comma rules, two of which include the phrase “do not…” Among other rules, the one about lists suggests that commas only populate the string after it has grown past three. These masters of grammatical brevity have been on a witch (which?) hunt against the insidious device for seventy five years and appear to be losing the battle.

Since converting to the most recent edition of Microsoft Word, I have left the grammar guide in operation. It can be less than helpful. In the third paragraph above, it advised me to leave out the comma after the word “grammar,” even though the preceding phrase was a parenthetic expression. Admittedly, parsing English is a tricky task for a computer. That is one reason why artificial intelligence has failed to make much progress.

The Chicago Manual of Style is both more and less restrictive in its advice. It encourages an “open” writing style which is less constrained by punctuation, but also offers a “close” form with more detailed, choppy rules.

Of course, famous writers like James Joyce revel in their capacity to flout the rules. The last section of Ulysses runs on for perhaps two hundred pages without a speck of punctuation. 

More power to him. He may be famous, but the result is still unreadable.

Joyce would feel right at home texting from a cell phone. I don’t even know how to produce a comma on my cell phone. Judging from the texts I see, few other people find them necessary, anyway. 

U C what U luk 4.

Among the other punctual abuses that make me boil, the apostrophe ranks high. Again, Microsoft Word is more of a hindrance than a help. 

Consider the plural form of a proper name: my character Frank is a Healy. His family is the Healys. Word usually insists that the only acceptable plural form includes an apostrophe “Healy’s.” The Chicago Manual of Style agrees with me (or I agree with them).

Michigan speech is notorious for apostrophe abuse.

A typical Michigander will say, “I’m going to Kmart’s,” or “My car was built by Ford’s.” My incipient baldness results directly from pulling my hair out over such possessiveness. I suppose they can’t help themselves. 

Perhaps the comma virus has risen to a new level.

GM Tech Center

The GM Tech Center is among the most intriguing locations around Detroit. The cloistered campus lies hidden behind a chain link fences and mature trees. While open houses and occasional tours have been hosted over the years, at most visitors only get a glimpse of what really occurs there.

When the center opened in the mid-1950s, it represented the singular vision of famed Finnish architects Eliel and Eero Saarinen. It was Eero’s first major commission. The main campus consists of four major buildings (now five) framing a vast, rectangular reflecting pond.

The entrance off Mound Road north of Twelve Mile offers an awe-inspiring view of the grounds beyond the dynamic fountains along the western edge of the pond. Each building features mirrored glass and gray steel panels with primary colored glazed brick end walls. To the north, the Research building stands beneath a tall, stainless steel ovoid water tower that contrasts with the linear forms of the buildings. To the south, the Design Center is dominated by its modernistic low-slung dome and a second reflecting pond. To the east, the Engineering and Manufacturing centers command most of the length of the lake.

While the buildings exude harsh modernism, the look is softened by broad expanses of grass and rows of mature trees. A broad boulevard circles the lake. Ironically, the campus seems remarkably pedestrian-friendly for the nerve center of a great automobile company.

The lobbies of the buildings are spectacular, too. The Research building features a floating spiral staircase to the second floor. In Design, another set of floating stairs rises above an indoor pool. A giant Rya rug framed a waiting area fitted with Barcelona chairs. Travertine marble abounds. At one time, the receptionist was a former Miss America every bit as spectacular as the building. These days, you’re more likely to be greeted by a burly ex-cop.

Perhaps the most impressive feature of the entire campus is the office originally built for Harley Earl, the first Styling VP. The free-form teak fittings encompassed his desk, a curved sofa and conference table, and at one time, a television. The windows captured the best view in Warren.

Despite its open, inviting architecture, the campus has always been about secrecy. At one time, new car styling was a well-kept and much-anticipated surprise. At the start of the model year, new cars arrived at dealers draped in canvas covers. Inside Styling and later Design, studios for each GM division remained behind locked doors, both to keep outsiders from wandering around, but also to keep the divisions from cross-pollenating. 

In these days of ubiquitous cell phone cameras and Google Earth, it’s much harder to keep a secret, but new cars still intrigue us. 

The GM Tech Center symbolizes that lingering sense of wonder.