Murder as a Fine Art Reading Group Guide

8/12/2019 Murder as a Fine Art Reading Group Guide

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Reading Group Guide

Murder as aFine Art

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A conversation between

David Morrell and Robert Morrison

Following is a discussion between novelist David Morrell and Robert

Morrison author of The English Opium Eater: A Biography of Thomas

De Quinceyand Queens National Scholar and professor of nineteenth-

century British literature, Queens University, Kingston, Ontario aboutMurder as a Fine Art.

Robert Morrison:I love the idea behindMurder as a Fine Art.

John Williams commits a series of sensational killings in

1811. Thomas De Quincey writes his most powerful essay

about the killings in 1854. Somebody reads De Quincey on

Williams and decides to produce his own version of thekillings, far exceeding them in terror. How did this idea

come to you?

David Morrell:Robert, coming from a De Quincey scholar,

your enthusiasm means a lot to me. I studied De Quincey

years ago when I was an undergraduate English student.

My professor treated him as a footnote in 1800s literature,giving him importance only because De Quincey was the

first to write about drug addiction in his notorious Confes-

sions of an English Opium-Eater.I forgot about him until I

happened to watch a movie about Charles Darwin, Creation,


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which dramatizes the nervous breakdown Darwin suffered

while writing On the Origin of Species.In the movie, some-

one says to Darwin, You know, Charles, people such as

De Quincey believe that were controlled by elements in our

mind that were not aware of.

RM:It sounds like Freud.

DM:Yes. But Freud didnt publish until half a century later. In

fact, because De Quincey invented the word subconscious,Freud may have been influenced by him. Anyway, I took

down my old college textbook, started reading De Quincey,

and became spellbound. I read more and more of his work.

Then I got to his blood-soaked essay about the terrifying

Ratcliffe Highway murders, On Murder Considered as One

of the Fine Arts. The idea came to me that someone would

read the essay and, for complicated reasons, replicate themurders on a more horrifying scale. De Quincey, the Opium-

Eater who was obsessed with murder, would then be the

logical suspect. You wrote a terrific biography about De

Quincey, The English Opium-Eater.What caused your own

interest in this brilliant author?

RM:I first heard of De Quincey many years ago when I was agraduate student at Oxford. My tutor was Jonathan Words-

worth, the great-great-great-nephew of the poet.

DM:What an experiencethatmust have been.

RM:For one of my tutorial assignments, Jonathan asked me to

read De Quinceys Confessions.I had no idea what to expect,and certainly no idea that I was going to spend the next

thirty years hooked on him. Of course I found the drugs

and addiction part of the narrative very interesting. But

what really grabbed me was how well De Quincey wrote.


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He could be, by turns, humorous, conversational, elaborate,

or impassioned. And this great ability as a stylist made it

possible for him to chart his experience with remarkable

depth and energy. After that, and like you, I just kept read-

ing. One of the wonderful things aboutMurder as a Fine Art

is how vividly it brings De Quincey to life, and how compel-

lingly it exploits his fascination with dreams, violence, mem-

ory, and addiction. Its not only a superb thriller, but it also

packs an intellectual punch. How did you bring these two

elements together so successfully?

DM:A reviewer once called me the mild-mannered professor

with the bloody-minded visions.

RM:Ha!

DM:Yes, it makes me laugh too. I was a literature professor formany years, one of several things that you and I have in

common. When I was in college, I worked in factories to

pay my tuition. Some of my fellow workers read thrillers

during their breaks, and I started wondering if it was possi-

ble to write a thriller that would appeal to two kinds of

readers those in my factory life and those in my college

life. The former wanted an exciting story to distract themfrom their jobs, and the latter wanted a story to have what

literature professors call subtext. From the start, with First

Blood,I followed that approach, but with De Quincey, I felt

like Id struck the mother lode. On the one hand, he writes

in blood-soaked detail about the Ratcliffe Highway

murders. On the other hand, he layers the killings with

amazingly complex perceptions. The two elements visceral and intellectual came together. Your biography

of De Quincey was a big help to me. Did you have any

scholarly adventures as you researched it, any discoveries

and revelations?


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RM:Writing the biography was definitely an adventure. As

youre aware, the most well-known modern derivative of

opium is heroin, and while working on the book I had long

discussions with two heroin addicts, one of whom was still

using, and another of whom was in his third recovery. I

asked them to read the sections in the biography where I

talk specifically about De Quincey and drugs, and their

comments really gave me a much better understanding of

what it is like to live with opiates. They also helped me to

realize that De Quincey must have been an alcoholic as wellas an opium addict, for he ingested opium as laudanum

(opium dissolved in alcohol), which means that he was

consuming vast quantities of both substances.

DM:Vast quantities indeed. At the peak of his addiction, De

Quincey drank sixteen ounces of laudanum each day. The

alcohol alone would have affected him, not to mentionthe opium. Yet somehow he was able to write some of the

most brilliant prose of the 1800s.

RM:My biggest adventure in writing the biography came six

days after I finished it, when I was casually leafing through

a London booksellers catalog and saw the following item

for sale: 119 Autograph Letters by De Quinceys ThreeDaughters: A Significant New Source for the Authors

Life. David, I fell out of my chair. A new source? I had

finished my biography less than a week earlier, and it was

already out of date! Needless to say, I phoned my publisher,

hollered Stop the presses, flew to London two days later,

and then had the exhilarating experience of reading through

the 119 letters.

DM:It sounds like a scene from a literary thriller. Your heart

must have been pounding.


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RM: So you had evidence that Emily was street-smart and

athletic all those fences and windows.

DM:I was reading between the lines of your biography of him.

His daughters grew up in an intellectual household and had

independent attitudes because of the radical-thinking

people he knew. Thus in my novel Emily became not only

De Quinceys spy but also a delightfully outspoken woman

whose advanced ideas make people in the novel gape. As

one example, Emily refuses to wear the awkward thirty-seven-pound hooped dresses of the period and instead

prefers a loose dress with trousers underneath, a garment

known as a bloomer dress that was named after an early

feminist named Amelia Bloomer. She constantly outsmarts

constables, undertakers, and even Englands home secretary.

I always smiled when I wrote a scene that Emily dominated.

It occurs to me that were in a long-overdue De Quinceyrenaissance. Tell me about the various De Quincey publica-

tions that youre editing.

RM:A renaissance indeed. Its gratifying to think that were

part of it.Murder as a Fine Artwill reach a wide audience

and play a major role in furthering interest in De Quinceys

life and writings. On my side, my new edition of Confessionsof an English Opium-Eaterwas recently published by Oxford

University Press. Im really excited about it. I thought I

knew the Confessionspretty well, and yet when I sat down to

edit his memoir, I discovered all sorts of things that I hadnt

noticed before, especially in the magnificent dream sequence

at the end. Right now, Im working on a much longer selec-

tion of De Quincey that will be published in the 21st-Century Oxford Authors series. The edition will contain all

of De Quinceys finest work, including his great essays on

murder and his articles about his friends Wordsworth,


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Coleridge, and other literary stars of the time. I think of it as

equivalent to aDe Quinceys Greatest Hitsalbum.

DM: De Quincey was so cool that if he were alive today, I

think hed approve of the metaphor. His prose can be so

vivid that sometimes I think he isstill alive. I read his thou-

sands of pages so often that after a while I felt that I was

channeling him. One of my own adventures in writing

Murder as a Fine Artwas the chance to become friends with

you and to share our enthusiasm for all things De Quincey.Thanks, Robert.

This interview first appeared on mulhollandbooks.com, April 2013.


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Worlds Colliding

My name is David Morrell.

I write thrillers.

On occasion, people are puzzled when they learn that I also have a

PhD in American literature from Penn State and that I was a full profes-sor at the University of Iowa, where I taught Hawthorne, Melville, Henry

James, and Edith Wharton.

For me, the two worlds blend perfectly. In my youth, I earned the

money for my undergraduate tuition by working twelve-hour night shifts

in factories. In one memorable task, I made fenders for automobiles,

shredding several pairs of thick leather gloves during each shift as I han-

dled razor-sharp sheets of metal. When I was transferred to another areaof the factory, the man who replaced me lost both his hands in the fender-

molding machine.

I noticed that, even though the workers had the glazed look of zom-

bies, they read books during their lunch hour. When I looked closer, I

discovered that every book was a thriller. The excitement of the plots took

the laborers away from the terrible tedium of their lives.

One morning, after my factory shift ended, I drove to the nearby uni-versity, where I was scheduled to meet with my adviser about the require-

ments for finishing my BA studies. During that drive, I had an epiphany.

I had already made the decision to become a writer, and I had no doubt


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that I wanted to write thrillers. After all, they had given me a psychologi-

cal escape when I was a child and family arguments so frightened me

that I frequently slept under my bed. I knew that the kind of stories that

had been my salvation would be the kind of stories I would write.

But how would I do it?

My epiphany came in this form. Struck by the contrast between the

factory I had left and the university I approached, I wondered if it was

possible to write thrillers that satisfied two different types of readers at the

same time: those eager for distraction, and those who wanted the kinds of

themes and techniques that I was accustomed to in university literaturecourses. A thriller by definition must be thrilling. Could it accom-

plish that primary goal and simultaneously have other purposes? I was

reminded of illustrations that seem to depict one thing when observed

from a particular angle and then depict something else when seen from a

different perspective.

Back in 1915, Van Wyck Brooks, a famous analyst of American culture,

deplored the use of highbrow and lowbrow as labels that critics used tocategorize fiction. Brooks condemned both extremes and suggested that

there werent inferior forms of fiction, only inferior practitioners. In his

view, it was possible for popular fiction to have serious intentions without

ever sacrificing entertainment appeal and narrative drive.

That became my goal. The letters I get from readers that most gratify

me are of two different types. In one, readers thank me for distracting

them from the harsh reality of fires, car accidents, lost jobs, divorces, seri-ous medical problems, and similar calamities. In the second kind of letter,

readers tell me that, when they reread my books, themes and techniques

that werent obvious on first reading suddenly emerge from the back-

ground, with the result that the books become different with a later

reading.

This shifting nature of reality, depending on the angle from which we

perceive it, is one of my favorite themes. My novel Murder as a Fine Arttakes place in 1854 London. Its main character, Thomas De Quincey, uses

the theories of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (Does reality

exist objectively or only in our minds?) to solve a series of mass killings


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that imitate the infamous Ratcliffe Highway murders of forty-three years

earlier.

Call me schizophrenic or the sum of my contradictions. All these

years after I left the factory where I worked and drove toward the univer-

sity where I studied, I continue to be two separate people when I write,

with two different kinds of readers in my imagination.

This essay first appeared on mulhollandbooks.com, November 2011.


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Questions and topics for discussion

1. Thomas De Quincey, the protagonist ofMurder as a Fine Art,is based

on a person of historical record, a writer popular in the 1800s. What

do you think the novel says about De Quincey? What does the novel

convey specifically about addiction, given De Quinceys dependenceon laudanum, a medicinal form of opium that was once commonplace

in English households?

2. What did you think of De Quinceys daughter Emily? How would

you describe her relationship with her father, and would you care for

him in the same way if you were in her shoes? What doesMurder as a

Fine Artreveal about gender roles in Victorian society and how they

might or might not have been in a state of flux?3. David Morrell researched the period and setting of his novel in great

detail. What about the novels depiction of Victorian society most

surprised you? What do you think the novel tells us about class

mobility and social stratification?

4. What literary works do you think influenced Morrell the most in the

writing of Murder as a Fine Art? Did the writing style or characters

remind you of the style or the characters of another authors work inparticular or any other novel in Morrells body of work?

5. Who did you think might be responsible for the killings inMurder as a

Fine Artleading up to the novels central revelation? Were you surprised

at the killers identity? How did you react when the secret was revealed?


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6. Were you familiar with Thomas De Quincey before readingMurder

as a Fine Art? What, if anything, did Morrells novel teach you about

the writer or his work? Will you be picking up anything written by

Thomas De Quincey after reading Morrells novel, and if so, what?

7. What do you think the novels depiction of criminality and of its two

central members of the police force, Detective Inspector Ryan and

Constable Becker, says about the law enforcement of the time?

8. Murder as a Fine Artends with the hint of romantic potential between

Emily De Quincey and either Detective Inspector Ryan or Constable

Becker. Which suitor do you think would be a better match for Emilyand why?

Murder as a Fine Art Reading Group Guide

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