IQ, by Joe Ide
Hard boiled detective fiction for 21st C south-central LA
A few things this got me thinking about:
- goddamn it's hard to write a really satisfying mystery. Usually when the reveal happens it just... happens, it kinda makes sense but something else would have made sense too, it doesn't have that feeling of satisfaction and completion and unpredicted-inevitability.
- writing a good plot is really hard too
- none of this matters? these books aren't about the mystery or the plot, really, they're about immersing yourself in a certain mood/vibe/energy for the course of a few hours?
Also: it struck me that I'm in an odd position re: depictions of south central LA. I don't really know anything about south central LA, the underworld of drug gangs, the lives of rich rappers, or basically anything else that came up in this book. So I have no way to tell whether the author's depictions are realistic or not: if anything, it's possible that a depiction based entirely on watching movies would come across as more realistic to me than a depiction based on actual life there, if actual life is full of details and incidents that don't fit my expectations as based on the movies.
I don't know -- on some level, maybe this isn't quite so. I quoted something my friend Toly said when I was book-thoughting the amazing Golden Hill, about some books having the quality of feeling "suffused with reality"
For a historical novel, it's when you feel that the author is really so much there in that area of the past, has internalized so much of its everyday details and moments and intricacies that separate the past from us, that they can integrate it all together and present an extremely believable and detailed picture. [E.g. when the protagonist of Golden Hill notices that none of the girls in 1746 New York have pox-marks,] which is unthinkable in London - that was the moment I felt it's probably a fantastic book. Because you have to be a good guide with a detailed map to get there, right? It's not relevant to the plot. A modern person wouldn't even think of that detail. But someone coming from London to the better airs of the colonies for the first time would probably notice that. I don't know if it's a true detail (for all I know he's fibbing and e.g. there was lots of pox in the colonies as well), but it's extremely true-looking in a wholesome way, so to speak.
And maybe that's how we judge books like IQ, just as much -- books that are set in the present but in social worlds as far from ours as 1746 New York might be.
Speaking of things I don't really know about: the structure of this book felt "forced" to me, as if the publisher or editor or agent (or a writing coach?) had pushed the author into Making Some Changes. How could I possibly know? But the beginning of the book was a set-piece that had nothing to do with the rest of the novel, and felt (to me) like something glued on to make it Dramatic From Page 1. Similarly, the ending felt to me like it was... forced, for one reason or another, how could I tell? But as I said, I don't think plot really matters that much, and the vibe stayed engaging throughout, so.
The absolute funniest bit, to me, was after the very end of the book, where Hachette Book Group announced that they "support the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture." This is funny because 1) the author gets 6.5% of the revenues on the paperback (after various deductions, probably), while Hachette Book Group gets the rest, but they're hiding behind the Artistic Genius as the reason they care about copyright, and 2) one theme of the novel is about creative artists getting taken advantage of by their financial backers.
It reminded me of watching Fight Club, this film about burning down the establishment, and realising that I'd just paid $10 for this message to 20th Century Fox. The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house, I know, but there's something so ridiculous about them selling you a tool with "Fuck The Master!" emblazoned on it, being sufficiently confident you wouldn't know how to use it anyway.