Yes, the roundtables will keep coming until I run out of ideas or authors to participate, and I have a lot of ideas and a big virtual Rolodex. For this installment, I was chatting with Julia Dahl about potential subjects and she suggested class. It got me thinking about how exactly class and social divisions work in crime fiction, and thus another roundtable is born. Here’s our lineup, along with their latest novels and where to get them.
Julia Dahl, The Missing Hours (Minotaur)
Angel Luis Colón, Hell Chose Me (Down & Out)
Laura McHugh, What’s Done in Darkness (Random House)
Adrian McKinty, The Chain (Mulholland)
Joe Ide, The Goodbye Coast (Mulholland)
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“I party with Havarti”
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Lisa: Hi! Please let us know when you are here, where in the world you are, the last book you wrote and your favorite kind of cheese.
Laura McHugh: Hi! I’m in Columbia, Missouri, my most recent book is What’s Done in Darkness, and I like almost all cheese, but maybe Stilton best. 🙂
Lisa: My husband is a Stilton fan. I die for double-creams.
Angel: Hi folks, I’m in New Jersey, my last book was Hell Chose Me, and I party with Havarti.
Julia Dahl: My name is Julia Dahl, I’m in New York’s Hudson Valley, my most recent book is The Missing Hours and my favorite cheese is the stinkiest cheese on the plate.
Adrian McKinty: Hello. I’m Adrian. The last book I wrote was called The Chain. My favourite cheese is probably Munster.
Julia: My son just read a comic where a mom accidentally picks the Monster cheese to make a sandwich instead of Muenster and…hijinks ensue!
Joe Ide: Hi all I’m In Santa Monica
Julia: OMG Joe Ide too? This is the best company I’ve been in in YEARS.
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“Just because they are ‘low’ class doesn’t mean they have no moral compass.”
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Laura: My characters are working class Midwestern/Ozark people who face obstacles/lack opportunities to change their situations for the better. Hard to claw out of that class in rural isolated areas.
Julia: In my most recent book my main character is a wealthy, educated, semi-famous white woman living in Manhattan—essentially, the upper class and the height of privilege. I chose that world because the book is about the aftermath of a sexual assault and part of what I wanted to address was that there are literally no good ways to respond when you are attacked in that way. I wanted to work on the idea that *even* a woman of her profile will likely not be believed or taken seriously as a victim.
Angel: I like to think my characters are completely defined by their misconception of class and how to achieve success. They rationalize their behavior is being a means to an end that should bring happiness or satisfaction. A lot of their arguments boil down to, “Well, if they can, why can’t I?”
Lisa: That’s the gist of noir, isn’t it? Noir is where dreamers become schemers (I stole that from Laura Lippmann)
Laura: It affects the choices [my characters] make—sometimes there are no good choices. But just because they are “low” class doesn’t mean they have no moral compass.
Julia: I wanted to drive home that in some ways, she’s even at a disadvantage in her privilege: no one is going to feel sorry for the trust fund girl who got drunk. But you don’t have to be likable to deserve justice.
Angel: Suffering under the delusion that you can make the system work for you while blind to the fact that it is blatantly built to destroy you.
Lisa: Laura that’s important—morality and class are not the same.
Julia: super interesting!
Lisa: Adrian you are quiet!
Adrian: I’m a good listener
Julia: love that!
Julia: YES
Lisa: and a good talker
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“People who would never be racist are gleefully classist.”
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Lisa: I didn’t mean for Adrian to be our sole non-American. But I had several British writers turn me down because of the topic.
Laura: At a book club, a lady told me there were no strong women in my book…after some heated discussion, she realized her definition of a strong woman is a woman with an advanced degree and a powerful job. Class comes into play for readers as well as writers.
Lisa: Laura That’s fascinating.
Lisa: It’s a conflation of class and a very strict value system.
Adrian: It’s also an American thing. If you read the comments in say the Washington Post there’s such class hatred for people from working class backgrounds who don’t trust the government or whatever, who don’t take a vaccine and die of Covid. There’s a gleeful tone when they die and vulgarity that you would never see with say race.
Adrian: People who would never be racist are gleefully classist.
Lisa: Race is how class plays out in a lot of books.
Angel: Laura—you bring in a great point. Some genres, and especially some subgenres of crime fiction can hit a little too close to home for certain folks while others have the luxury of looking in from the outside.
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“Try to set a crime novel in a trailer park and see what editors will say to you… if it was set in the Upper East Side or West Hollywood you’d have the editors salivating.”
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Lisa: So Adrian are you saying that Americans hate working-class people? Or just the anti-vaxxer subset?
Lisa: A lot of those anti-vaxxers were MAGA supporters.
Adrian: I’m saying that the current Covid crisis and the previous 4 years of MAGA supporters has been revealing: people who consider themselves “liberal” reveal themselves to have seething class hatred.
Lisa: The pandemic has been very revealing in that way.
Adrian: Try to set a crime novel in a trailer park and see what editors will say to you…whereas if it was set in the Upper East Side or West Hollywood and you’d have the editors salivating.
Laura: I live in a deep red state. Some people appreciate how I write the characters and the region, some are very defensive.
Lisa: Adrian there is definitely a tendency to go with the more familiar problems. AKA rich people problems.
Lisa: Julia, your book subverts that
Adrian: In Britain of course it’s much much worse…
Laura: Yep, as someone writing about the working poor, it seems like that’s not as fun for people to read about…
Lisa: Why do you think none of the Brits wanted to do this discussion Adrian?
Julia: Adrian is totally right. We talk about an “unlikable” heroine and laud them at some level but if there was a book with a MAGA woman we were supposed to empathize with, follow for 300 pages—would that fly in the US with the “literary” set? (And frankly I count myself among that set).
Lisa: Even worse: make her the size of an average woman (16 dress size I believe).
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“In the US we still believe anyone can be a billionaire if you just work hard enough. That lie is pretty damaging.”
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Adrian: Lisa, in Britain the situation is worse because publishing is effectively run by a narrow clique of privately educated schoolboys and girls (most British culture is).
Julia: I remember reading that a few years ago it became actually more difficult for someone born in the US to “transcend” their class than in the UK—but of course in the US we still believe anyone can be a billionaire if you just work hard enough. That lie is pretty damaging.
Lisa: this is the Adrian I wanted!
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Shuggie Bain vs. JD Vance
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Adrian: Because of Harry Potter I reckon many Americans think most British people go to boarding school. In fact only about 1 percent do… It’s just a very rich influential 1 %
Julia: Adrian, and in some ways the exception proves the rule. Like, Shuggie Bain was a smash hit perhaps because no one had seen anything like it and they all patted themselves on the back for being so openminded (I have no idea if they did, but it’s one of the biggest books I recall from the UK in years).
Lisa: Yes, one of the principles of American life is bootstrapping. But unless you have connections or a very in demand skill, it is very hard to rise, Julia.
Adrian: Julia, exactly right!
Lisa: Adrian, I made it ten pages in. I read Clockwork Orange, and I don’t need to read it again.
Laura: It’s why I’m often writing about trying to escape a dead-end town—it can be incredibly difficult to bootstrap your way up if you have nothing.
Julia : I didn’t finish it (had so much work reading I couldn’t commit) but was enjoying it. It felt very vivid and emotionally interesting to me. To each his own! I hope to finish it next year!
Adrian: You didn’t finish Shuggie?
Lisa: Julia next year in Jerusalem!
Adrian: I thought that book was terrific. It’s actually very funny but much of that perhaps is lost in translation.
Julia: Adrian I didn’t! only because I had so much other reading and I wanted to focus on it, not go in and out. I plan to start again.
Lisa: Adrian you are very tolerant of hard to get dialogue in books.
Lisa: I get impatient.
Julia: I was really enjoying it
Adrian: I think it’s just a flow thing. If you flow with it for a few days, you’re in the mood of the book and everything clicks.
Julia: And Laura, isn’t your WIP almost entirely about a woman daring to try to get out of a dead end town?
Lisa: But Shuggie is an interesting example—very rooted in working-class life but winning awards.
Julia: Over here we get JD Vance! :woman-facepalming:
Angel: You’re saying JD Vance ISN’T the voice of the working class???
Adrian: Shuggie is the exception that proves the rule. I wrote an article that ended up getting widely circulated a few years ago about how boring the Booker Prize was always going to posh people who live in North London. There was a lot of similar criticism. Since then, no one who lives in North London has won it.
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“JD Vance was such a fucking fake hillbilly.”
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Lisa: The hillbilly problem, as it were, is one of the places we can really locate a class structure in America. Laura what is your take on that disaster?
Laura: I couldn’t get through that book.
Adrian: I read Hillbilly Elegy enraged
Adrian: because he was such a fucking fake hillbilly.
Lisa: That was the consensus.
Adrian: He was talking about my people poor Ulster Scots from the condescending position of a middle-class suburban boy
Angel: Yep, and that’s a whole other side to the way folks in the States look at the “lower” class. They are either a hindrance or there to be exploited for their own gain.
Laura: Also a problem to view them as a monolith. There are MAGA folks but not all of them are working-class. Plenty of rich MAGA folks as well.
Lisa: the libertarians! most frightening of all!
Angel: Folks like Vance use a flimsy connection to Appalachia and bleed those people dry and he does it giddily.
Angel: I’m from the Bronx, but I don’t pretend as if I know the worst of what people in my old neighborhoods went through. I was a lucky kid. I use some of what I was exposed to, but I’m pretty careful to avoid pretending I speak for everyone.
Lisa: Which is an old story Angel. I think about the way the music industry treated black artists, or even poor white ones.
Julia: Exactly. I remember listening to someone talking about the fallacy of “the Black community” or “the Latinx community”—those communities, like “the lower income community” are diverse in everything from values to ideas to dreams to experience…
Lisa: Canadians are so middle ground. They love fairness. And no one talks about where they went to school.
Adrian: I lived in Australia for 10 years and that’s the first question Australians always ask one another: Where did you go to school?
Lisa: Interesting! In Canada no one does it because they all went to state schools (except for McGill).
Adrian: About 1/3 of Australians go to private school and the influential private schools are v influential.
Lisa: Are they all in one place?
Lisa: Julia how would you characterize the class status of the Brooklyn/Orange County Orthodox Jews?
Adrian: Melbourne and Sydney: just think of any famous actor, politician, environmentalist or musician and the chances are they went to one of the elite Sydney or Melbourne schools.
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“Ben Stiller would be a barista if he weren’t BEN STILLER.”
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Lisa: [sorry Joe had to go but sends regrets]
Adrian: almost no working class Australian ever makes it
Lisa: Adrian, that is 100 percent true of LA.
Adrian: I laughed when Ben Stiller said there was no nepotism in Hollywood. Ben STILLER
Lisa: Laura would you ever write about someone who was trying to escape that rural life?
Lisa: Really, Ben Stiller would be a barista if he weren’t BEN STILLER.
Laura: I do in just about every book, including the new one I’m halfway through. This current one is probably the most pessimistic book yet.
Lisa: I didn’t find the last one to be upbeat! (I don’t like upbeat so it suits me fine).
Laura: Usually my characters would like to get out but end up getting sucked back in.
Adrian: I haven’t seen White Lotus but my wife said there’s an interesting class dynamic thing going on there.
Julia: Well, money-wise, many, if not most, are “lower class” in that they get lots of their daily use funds from the government. Many/most of the most religious are also poorly educated in non-religious topics so even when they try to leave their world they are often thwarted by their lack of understanding of the world around them. That said, many will tell you they don’t *feel* poor. The community support (with exceptions, like, if you accuse someone in the community of abuse) is what keeps people lifted up. No one goes hungry, neighbors provide. No one goes without a babysitter, neighbors provide.
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“NYC is insanely class conscious. I could write an entire book on Upper East Side nannies.”
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Lisa: That is a parallel world, isn’t it? Aren’t they also refusing to get vaxxed?
Julia: Laura what always interests me about your books is the reasons they get sucked back in. It’s easy to say: cut ties! but these are people with hearts and souls – they love their families. Turning their backs entirely—which might allow them to “break free”—feels immoral.
Lisa: Adrian How do you find NYC w/r/t class?
Laura: Yes, Julia! Lots of generational stuff coming into play.
Julia : Lisa believe it or not I’ve not been following the vax thing with that group. But generally they do seem to have an anti-vax mindset. They were also ravaged by the disease early, especially in Brooklyn.
Lisa: Ancestry can really affect people’s ideas of who they are and who they came from.
Adrian: NYC is insanely class conscious. I could write an entire book on Upper East Side nannies.
Lisa: I definitely grew up with the expectation I would do as well or better financially than my parents’ generation. Then I became a writer. End of story.
Lisa: Adrian There are several great ones.
Adrian: This would be nonfiction. A delineation by race and background.
Lisa: One of the big differences I see in Canada is there are not very many nannies.
Laura: First generation college student. Always wanted to escape home, but so drawn back to it in my writing.
Angel: Truth. I grew up in NYC knowing which of the more fancy neighborhoods to avoid to keep out of trouble. You had to know where to navigate on either side of the class line.
Julia: Laura so interesting!
Lisa: Laura, when I taught at Rutgers many of my students were first generation to go to college. I admired them so much.
Julia: I’m still trying to figure out how to write a proper Fresno book…someday I really want to do it justice.
Adrian: Did anyone see Stu Neville’s article on class and regionalism in the Irish Times on Saturday?
Lisa: Please summarize for the group
Adrian: He was talking about how in British crime fiction if you’re from certain regions or from a certain class you can’t talk about that because you won’t get published as no one wants to read about it.
Laura: Oh wow, I’ll have to read that
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“I always have to hide my own accent at work b/c if I go too thick, it’s considered unprofessional.”
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Lisa: Accents! Such a complicated thing.
Adrian: Accents are such a signifier in the UK
Lisa: One of the things people do if they are aspirational. Oh, it’s true in the US too.
Julia: My mom grew up in Nashville and thus had a southern accent. She went to college in NY (at a small “seven sisters” school called Vassar) and forced herself to lose the accent.
Angel: I think you see some of that stateside as well. Folks up north have their BS about the south. I always have to hide my own accent at work b/c if I go too thick, it’s considered unprofessional.
Lisa: No one with say a thick southern accent will get as much respect as a Midwesterner.
Adrian: Are there any news anchors in the US with a Southern or Midwest accent? Is that allowed?
Lisa: The newscasters’ accent is derived from the Midwest but sanitized.
Lisa: Oprah talked about this in the beginning of her career, as she was southern and had to drop it fast in order to be on camera.
Lisa: I mean, OPRAH.
Julia : Eleanor Beardsley the NPR Paris reporter is from the south and I’ve heard people give her shit for suppressing her accent. you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
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Class in the age of COVID
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Lisa: Open question: How do you think the pandemic has worked w/r/t class? Here they made it clear that there was a direct correlation between essential workers and the spread of the virus. (Here=Canada). And they redlined neighborhoods with high cases to get vaxxed first.
Adrian: In Sydney, Australia the opposite happened. Poorer neighbourhoods were under no travel orders whereas in Bondi people were allowed to go the beach.
Adrian: In Melbourne they didn’t allow people to leave certain housing projects. They literally had cops posted outside.
Lisa: I think that was true of curfews in the US too. Enforced in poorer neighborhoods.
Adrian: All of this was generally supported by the populace
Julia: I consider myself upper middle (my great-grandmother went to college) and I’ve never had to worry about money. I feel my privilege every day (by which I mean I am actively thankful for the safety and psychological security it affords me), but never more than through this pandemic. My work (writing and teaching) went online easily. I had the ability to keep my son at home and still teach him; even my husband’s business (he makes knives) kept going because people who can afford them didn’t take a hit. And that’s just it—the rich/upper class were just fine. The middle and “lower” classes had to leave their homes to work and either got sick or got laid off because no one was spending their money out. I think the pandemic will definitely exacerbate the class divide.
Angel: Being quarantined, I wasn’t able to see NYC during the thick of it, but a lot of folks I know considered essential had to deal with a lot of issues w/ their hours and job stability even though they still had to work whenever they had bandwidth. Lot of second and third jobs.
Lisa: I think poor people often have to hustle and juggle many jobs/commitments. Here in pandemic a lot of the people who couldn’t work just left, and now there is a shortage of people to do low-paying work (restaurants are really feeling this). BUT the good news about Canada is they are floating a basic income credit, which I don’t think would ever happen in the US.
Adrian: In my neighbourhood (the Upper West Side) they say something like 20% of the population left to go upstate or the Hamptons according to phone records. It felt like much more. Sometimes on Broadway I’d be the only person on the street in the middle of the day.
Lisa: Everyone I knew who could leave NYC did.
Angel: I know a lot of people leaving now. Lots of folks in NJ moved as well. Either to more suburban areas or out of state.
Julia: Adrian and that’s a perfect illustration: when the going gets tough, the rich can leave.
Adrian: I’ll just say that I think this topic is not covered enough. People love to talk about race in this country but class not so much.
Laura: Agree, Adrian
Lisa: Yes, Julia it reminded me of the robber barons going to their camps in the Adirondacks during the flu epidemic.
Julia: My main comment is that I hate this pandemic and I want to hang out in person with you all.
Lisa: Adrian, that is why I am paid the small bucks. To force people to talk about awkward topics.
