Second thoughts on Alan Furst

This is one of the things that makes Alan Furst such a remarkable historical thriller writer, a novelist whose specialty is wartime or pre-war Europe. From Blood of Victory:

"Belgrade -- Or so the British cartographers called it. To the local residents, it was Beograd, the White City, the capital of Serbia, as it had always been, and not a place called Yugoslavia, a country which, in 1918, some diplomats made up for them to live in. Still, when that was done, the Serbs were in no shape to object to anything. They'd lost a million and a half people, siding with Britain and France in the Great War, and the Austro-Hungarian army had looted the city. Real, old-fashioned neoclassical looting--none of this prissy filching of the national art and gold. They took everything. Everything that wasn't hidden and much that was. Local residents were seen in the street wearing curtains, and carpets. And ten years later, some of them, going up to see friends in Budapest, were served dinner on their own plates."

That's a hefty chunk of exposition, especially this late in the game, more than three-fourths of the way through the book. And some of the background is, let's face it, pretty tour-guide basic ("Here we are in Belgrade -- or Beograd, as the locals say").

Admittedly, Blood of Victory shifts locales a lot, so Furst has to get some map-reading in. With most thriller writers, such exposition reads like dutiful work -- stuff they have to shovel in. But Furst does it so smoothly and enjoyably. He treats the reader well -- as much as the narrative or the characters, he seems to say, this is what a historical thriller is about, this kind of texture. It's not just data nor is it a bit of war-is-hell, tough-guy posturing on the narrator's part. It's evocative, graceful, humane in the way the author clearly understands the anger and surprise of the Serbs in that last line yet also relishing the humor of the situation from his appreciation of the good "old-fashioned" looting to the punch line that Furst saved for the end. It's all very much part of his "urbane" or "European" touch -- that sympathy and a shrug.

In fact, for comparison's sake, let's look at another thriller writer's use of exposition and scene-setting, a thriller writer I've chosen perfectly at random, oh, let's say -- Tom Clancy. This is from Clancy's The Teeth of the Tiger:

"The cabs in London are good." He looked up, "You know that. You've been to London a lot."

"Some," Jack agreed. "Nice city. Nice people"

That sparkling little exchange gets to the heart of London, don't you think? You can practically see the nice people riding around in all those good cabs. I also like that "'Some,' Jack agreed." That's so much simpler than "'Some,' Jack partly agreed."

About Furst, though, one can't help but wonder: Where the hell did he run across that marvelous detail about place settings? The New York Times recently had a flurry of articles about novelists providing sources in bibliographies at the back of their books -- either castigating them for showing off their research or, as in the case of Ian McEwan, futilely trying to stave off charges of plagiarism, even when he admitted, straight off, that a particular nurse's memoir was a major source for his novel, Atonement. (Damned if they do .... )

But here Furst has such a deft way with his research. The particular paperback version I have is a "reader's club" edition, with questions in the back and two brief items, one on Furst's research and another on suggestions for further reading -- clearly in response to what I think is a perfectly natural interest on the part of readers, especially when it comes to historical novels. Some readers, it's true, want to pick apart 'what's history' from "what's fiction' -- in effect, dismantling the novelist's magic in weaving together the world of his novel. I merely want to know more -- he's created such an intriguing, multi-layered place, even if it's often dangerous and violent. Or admiringly, I want to know where he got the magic wand. In this case, neither of the "reader's club" appendices really told me where he got the bit about the dinnerware.

I recently picked up Blood of Victory because I'm readig a book about thrillers for review, and it reminded me that I still had some titles of Furst's to read. I came to him late because he didn't always write like this. Initially, his writing felt strained, a patently movie-ish attempt to evoke atmosphere, not create it but borrow it, remind us of it from other places. His first novel, Night Soldiers got excellent reviews when it came out in 1988. I was turned off by this sort of passage, though:

"But nothing here was what it seemed. Even the gray stone of the buildings hid within itself a score of secret tints, to be revealed only by one momentary strand of light. At first, the tide of secrecy that rippled through the streets had made him tense and watchful, but in time he realized that in a city of clandestine passions, everyone was a spy. Amours. Fleeting or eternally renewed, tender or cruel, a single sip or an endless bacchanal....."

Did you catch that? It's not just the gray stone that has its secrets, it's the gray stone's hidden tints. Now, that's a secretive town. And that's a writer who's piling on too many metaphors; he's either showing off his 'fancy' writing or he's insecure and he's forcing things.

But Furst calmed down, gained confidence, his writing became smoky yet lean. And he began using dry, throwaway humor. In the midst of all the suspense and violence, it lends a cosmopolitan feel that aids immensely in making his typical main character appealing. These are sadly experienced men, often ex-patriates with conflicted loyalties or they're emigres from smaller countries, the perennial losers in the big European wars. They're men who are reluctant to fight but know they must -- they're not natural warrriors or raging idealists, then, but men who would frankly be much happier eating good food and staying in bed with a lover. Even the military or espionage operations they get involved in are not the grand affairs like Overlord or Barbarossa. They're more the nuts-and-bolts clandestine effort: smuggling weapons or people or information, sabotaging the enemy's oil shipments, trying to sway a political situation one way or the other. Yet, we learn, everything counts. Rather than an easy nostalgia for some time of supposed moral clarity, his novels give us a feel for the murk of warfare and espionage -- the "kingdom of shadows" -- and it's often the murk that is as dangerous as any enemy.

All of this leads to that very Furstian effect: His novels are at once elegant yet earthy, sardonically anti-heroic and quietly heroic, exotic yet matter-of-fact. I can't get enough of them.