I just finished Port Mortuary, one of my juicy library finds and the latest entry in Patricia Cornwell’s sputtering-to-a-close mystery series centered around Dr. Kay Scarpetta.
This isn’t a book review, though. No. It’s not that, because as clever as I try to be behind the keyboard there are only so many times and different ways I can say “Gosh, this was an awful book.”
This is more of me, as a writer, contemplating one of the ways a writer can lose her voice.
Twenty years ago when Cornwell first came out with Scarpetta the books were sharp and intriguing and compulsively readable. Patricia Cornwell had lived a writer’s life to that point, doing the odd jobs here and there–including working as a denier in a mortuary. Her books were written in the corners of her everyday life, just like the books of most of the authors I know. Then she got very famous and very popular and very wealthy.
And it occurs to me just now that I can only think of one writer who has been able to maintain voice and readability once they hit the ranks of the superwealthy. JK Rowling. Well, and maybe Stephen King, who has repeatedly had his own mortality dangled in front of him as a sort of mantra and muse. Of course this new book of Rowling’s will be the true test, because with Harry she was finishing what she started when she was poor.
Once writers become wealthy, they seem to lose touch with the things that make stories readable. They still have their core abilities (for the most part), but they don’t have story. They’re living in a sort of Midas curse, where all they touch turns golden…and food is inedible and other people are kept at a distance.
It has long been acknowledged by Cornwell herself that Scarpetta is merely an exceptionally well-done Mary Sue, the version of herself that Cornwell would have been if people like that actually existed. So it’s very telling that as Cornwell has had financial success (and difficulty) and romantic success (and difficulty) that Scarpetta would become who she is in this dreadful story. No longer is she a competent and intelligent woman dedicated to finding answers and tracking killers. Now she has a different job every five minutes–either she’s the chief medical examiner or she’s on loan to some other arcane death investigation outfit–and she is perpetually annoyed by anything and everyone around her. The only character that brings her any joy is one newly introduced in this story. Scarpetta is visibly tired of every single person who is part of her life, because they have problems and keep messing up and are so very very human. Humanity is not something of which Cornwell herself is overly fond, it would seem. While the characters like Lucy, Marino and Benton are all reintroduced with mini-tirades which run down their myriad faults and recite the ways in which they have dared cross Special Kay, the loving introductions are all saved for material goods. There are fawning descriptions of shampoos and watches and smartphones. Over the counter drugs are introduced by brand name as if we’re reading The Price Is Write. Expensive clothing is praised–in one instance the same outfit is described three times in four pages–while the wardrobes of poorer people are mocked. Like Cornwell it seems that Scarpetta has fallen in love with money.
This book is ruined by its author having sold her soul. As a writer that makes me incredibly sad. But it’s also a very good cautionary tale. At the end of the day if what matters most to you is your craft it is probably best to not hope to hard for exceeding wealth, because that turns your wine to an unreadably bitter vinegar.
Possibly it’s more a problem of being sick of the character rather than being spoiled? Also of getting older. I don’t read Scarpetta’s books, so I can’t say what her issues are, but I find that mystery writers (let’s limit it to that) with long-running series can keep things fresh by having more than one central character, so that they aren’t always stuck with the same person to write about (Tony Hillerman, e.g.) or by not being afraid to be goofy once in a while (Reginald Hill, e.g., with his appropriation of Austen’s plots) or by writing out-of-series books regularly.
Please trust me on this. This is a woman who is very much about money. I am basing this not only on an intuitive impression reading the books but also from several interviews with her where her wealth and her attitude toward it are a main topic. Most notably one a decade ago in Vanity Fair.
She has quite a few personal issues, the most prominent ones being a quest for and obsession with money; a very conflicted sexual identity; a macabre fascination with violence, especially violence against women. She’s also obsessed with physical perfection.
I would have to agree with this assessment. I used to read Cornwell’s books, and I enjoyed the Scarpetta mysteries, but I gave them up because I didn’t think she was a good enough writer to waste any more time on. She was always allowing her anger/repulsion to slip through the cracks. She especially demonstrated this through books like Hornet’s Nest (not a Scarpetta mystery), which was just terribly written.
http://www.celebitchy.com/76856/patricia_cornwell_partner_sue_investment_firm_for_losing_their_40_million_fortune/
The infamous Vanity Fair article is not available online but was written in 1997.
I don’t doubt what you say about her; as I said, I don’t read her books and therefore have no interest in her personal story. I’m really responding to the more general “I can only think of one writer who has been able to maintain voice and readability once they hit the ranks of the superwealthy.” Because I can think of a few (though perhaps they became merely wealthy, not superwealthy*) who have been able to maintain their voices, while I have seen a couple of my (previously) favorite writers lose their voices completely.
*But then there’s Mark Twain — superwealthy by the standards of his day, but certainly didn’t lose his voice.
I often wonder if this has more to do with a lack of editing than anything else.
I’d argue that King’s output in the late 80′s wasn’t spectacular and felt like it was in need of a good editor, the publisher was afraid to edit him for fear of losing the gravy train that is King. He switched publishers anyway, has one that edits him and I’d argue his output has greatly improved.
Could that be what’s happening with Cornwell?
I admit I read a couple of early installments in the series but based on negative buzz from fellow readers I trusted, I have since pursued other mystery reading opportunities.
It’s at this point that I must put in my requisite plus for Elizabeth George and Laura Lippman…:)