7 Things I Want From Novels

Recently T.S. Bazelli put together a list of the things she’d like to read in a novel. Some of her points were appealing (“Magic with serious consequences.”), but I was left wondering just what mine would be. We should keep such inventories as readers so we can acknowledge the writers who take such risks, and as writers so that we can attempt to fulfill them if no one else will. So here's my current tally. I focused on things I don't see often enough. The tally is incomplete. I guess it will remain incomplete until I die. Somebody remind me to do a draft on my deathbed.

1. Humor at its own expense. Not sarcastic, not wry or counter-cultural, not essentially “meta” or any other postmodernism that allows people to avoid direct feeling. Preposterous humor that exposes and cherishes quirks. This culture has an excess of humor that can only make me nod in concession that the writer was somehow clever. It's so plentiful I now read it as dead inside. I want you to actually make me laugh. Douglas Adams, Gail Simone, Stephen Fry, Jeff Smith and Mary Roach have all pulled this off, so I know it's possible.

2. Main characters that form a strong artificial family. They've elected to care for each other, tease and torment, stick up for each other, even support to irrational degrees. Think Lupin, Jigen and Goemon. Think Aragon, Legolas and Gimli. Hell, “A priest, a rabbi and a minister walk into a…” is one of the most boldly diverse casts in literature. Whether we watch them meet and develop together like the ka-tet of The Dark Tower, or they simply seem to have always co-existed like the surgery team from M*A*S*H, I will follow you anywhere for those clusters of people that just go together.

Poster art from Lupin the 3rd: Castle of Cagliostro. How we got an anime franchise out of a series of dimestore French novels, I don't know.

3. People possessing supposedly deviant characteristics who are not defined by those characteristics. I'd be much more interested in a gay character that was defined by his love of collecting Russian nesting dolls than by his sexuality.

4. Sex other than fucking. Fucking is not only tasteless, bland, and more base than sentimentality while managing to lack the soul – it’s also played out to the point of eye-rolling cliché. It doesn't even essentially bond characters anymore. It's both masturbatory and only good for masturbation. If you're going to write sex, have characters getting it wrong, being vulnerable, confused or cracking up laughing. Give me something distinct, something personal rather than prurient. I’m thinking of James Clavell’s hilarious all-dialogue sex, or Stephen King’s teens who don’t understand why it’s nothing like media led them to expect, or Ethan Coen comparing it to having your genitalia stuck in a paint mixer (“for the full quarter hour”). Or you could not have it at all. When it doubt, don't have it at all.

5. Absurd characters who relish in their own absurdity. One of my favorite character traits is that of Marvel’s Bullseye, a supervillain who wears a ridiculous costume because he actually loves the garish fashion. While few of us are that way (or have the guts to buy the wardrobe), most of us have our own absurdities. The state of satire has left many of us thinking the height of creativity is pointing out someone else's flaws, sheltering and reinforcing our own habits of being. The dubiously mature take on this in literature is to reveal the deep desire in some Gatsby-esque tragedy. Well folks, Jay Gatsby is dead. Give me characters who live their personal absurdities.

"It's perfect," he says, not comforting his tailor at all. Art by Steve Dillon, an interior from Bullseye: Greatest Hits.

6. Characters who survive and have to deal with circumstances. Death is often a cop-out from consequence. One of the best books I've read in recent years is Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which is all about living through the damages of tragedy. The survivors come out of it monumentally messed up, leaving it far more interesting than if they'd all simply died in tragedy. I cut slack for works that truly earned the punch, like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, but these are the exceptions. The best fiction can offer us ways out of deep depression and hardship. Mediocre fiction can at least be more interesting than “He was sad, and sadder, and even sadder, and then he died."

7. Take me into another view. I don’t need to agree with their morals, religion or actions. In fact, it’s better if I don’t. Humbert Humbert and Hannibal Lecter are not people I'd want to be around. They are fascinating on the page. Characters can exceed being mouthpieces or pawns for an agenda. If I even suspect you're trying to convert me you've already lost. I'll turn against you and rip apart your novel with a critical acumen I've been building for years. Most readers can do the same. I'm not asking for propaganda. What I love are those characters so broad in scope that they are twisted within things I'd never accept personally, and which I can sympathize with on some level. Plenty of the best Horror operates using such literary sympathy. I have a sense of smell, was raised by both of my parents and have never come close to an obsession that would lead me to kill, but I am left feeling deeply for Grenouille in Patrick Suskind's Perfume. That's success.