The Inexplicable Vice Is Revealed as a Virtue

The Inexplicable Vice Is Revealed
as a Virtue
Detective Johnson, who has served the city long and honorably,
is suddenly dismissed from the Police Force without
public explanation. Rumors circulate that Johnson was too
friendly with some unsavory underworld characters. To the
public eye, Johnson seems to be taking his dismissal hard:
he is hanging out in bars, drunkenly swearing to have revenge
on the Commissioner and the other high municipal
officials responsible for his dismissal. Before long, Johnson is
approached by members of a highly organized syndicate which
has terrorized the city for years. They proposition him. He
accepts. By dint of seemingly faithful service to the syndicate,
Johnson is finally taken into the full confidence of the gangsters.
As soon as he has garnered enough evidence to send
the syndicate members to jail, he is able to show his true
colors—and is forgiven by his family, friends, and fellow
policemen, most of whom had been convinced that he had
lost all sense of decency. The Mayor gives Johnson a citation,
and Johnson is promoted to the rank of Inspector.
Then there is the fellow who has been enlisted by the
Federal Bureau of Investigation to join the Communist
Party. He is forbidden to tell anyone of his mission, not
his wife, his mother, his neighbors. . . . And there is the
soldier who apparently has been dishonorably discharged
from the Army and proceeds to offer his services to the
enemy—in order, of course, to do intelligence work for
his own country.
The pull and tug of "inexplicable-vice" stories derives
from the necessity of the hero keeping the truth from his
loved ones and the consequent hardship of suffering their
contempt. The story ends when the hero at last is permitted
to explain the situation and regain the lost love and
respect. The actual accomplishment of the hero's mission
is only a secondary matter in these stories, and often can
be handled quite cavalierly by the writer. The interest of
the reader is pointedly directed toward the hero's embarrassment
and anguish at having to feign dishonor or defection.
Of course, there are stories in the slicks, and plenty of
them, in which the reader's attention is focused almost
exclusively on the hero's accomplishment of a mission.
They will be discussed at length later. The point being
made here is that these stories which contain the "inexplicable-
vice" complication need not have original or exciting
movement. Popular stories are almost invariably built
around either a physical or an emotional problem—rarely
both. A story of emotional stress will certainly have its
physical movement, but most often this tends to be trite
or insubstantial.
And the story primarily of physical movement—say,
a derring-do adventure piece—will have its descriptions of
fear and pain and uncertainty, but they will receive
straight, standard handling. This stingyness is not a
necessity; it is merely sufficiently in evidence to seem a
virtue.
It might be well to point out here a fact which will
become more and more apparent the further you read
into slick plot types. The stories of physical movement
mentioned above—mechanical-action pieces which once
filled all the pulps—are in a minority in the slicks and generally
seem to be on the decline. Explain it by the everincreasing
acquaintance of the public with Freudian and
pseudo-Freudian theory or however you will, but the
psychic difficulty is the stock-in-trade of today's slick story.
In reference to the inexplicable-vice stories, this fact is
important. The effort and ingenuity of the writer must
be expended not on the dangers the hero meets in the
prosecution of his mission or the courage and fortitude he
manifests but on the doubt and anxiety he feels at being
forced to mislead his loved ones—be it the girl whom the
hero loves and chances to lose because of his enforced
silence, or a dying mother who the hero fears may pass on,
thinking ill of her son, or children who must bear the
scorn of their companions on the hero's account.
With all stories for the slicks, the writer must first decide
what one question, what one mood he wishes to create,
and then turn all his energies to that task. In this type of
story, the question is HOW and WHEN will the hero be
able to make the truth known and the mood is one of
turmoil and torment. With that in mind, the initial task
of the writer is to make a convincing case for the hero
misleading his loved ones. Then his spiritual pain must
be brought to a point almost beyond bearing. Finally, the
revelation must come swiftly, cleanly, and immediately following
upon the hero's worst crisis.
In the majority of stories dealing with an "inexplicable
vice," the reader is made acquainted with the true allegiance
of the hero at the very outset. But there is an interesting
variation which makes for an extraordinarily
strong and suspenseful story. In the variation, an explanation
of the vice is kept not only from the characters within
the story framework but from the reader as well. And, of
course, the primary question arising in the reader's mind
changes from HOW and WHEN will the hero be able to
make his true nature known to a simple WHY is a seemingly
good man acting this way. But first an example.
A broken-down jockey arrives at a big-time track and persuades
a wealthy horse owner to give him a tryout, even
though his only experience has been restricted to second-rate
tracks. The jockey makes out well, is given steady work, and
begins to collect large purses. Nonetheless, he and his son
continue to dress shabbily, to eat and live cheaply. The
jockey, who otherwise seems to be a likable fellow, comes in
for a good deal of criticism from his stablemates for not taking
better care of the boy. At the close, it is revealed that the
jockey had only a short time to live and wanted to save
enough money before he died to take care of his son after
he was gone.
There's the extra premium of the stable owner adopting
the boy after the jockey's death, and the intensifier of the
jockey having further shortened his life by his exhaustive
riding at the end. But the suspense, the reason for the
reader finishing the story, lies in the mystery of the jockey's
parsimonious behavior.
Pains must be taken in a tale such as this to surround
the single, enigmatic vice with an abundance of virtues,
not only for the sake of contrast but to create an interesting
mystery. If an ordinary chap were to act viciously in some
single respect, neither the reader nor the supporting players
in the story would be much puzzled. But when a fine
fellow becomes needlessly cruel, unsympathetic, petty,
miserly, or unaffectionate, curiosity is stimulated.
In these two types of "inexplicable-vice" stories, there
is a nice contrast made between two of the three suspense
questions at the writer's disposal. When the reader is aware
of the reason for the hero's defection, the question HOW
is posed. How will the hero accomplish his mission and consequently
be free to counter the false impression he has
been forced to give? At no point is there a serious doubt
in the reader's mind that the hero will accomplish his
mission. The only question concerns the method. As a
result, it is up to the writer to play a delaying action
against the accomplishment of the mission, injecting at
every opportunity added cause for the hero's embarrassment.
When the explanation of the vice is withheld from the
reader the question is a simple, straightforward WHAT.
What could possibly lead such a man as the hero to be so
detestable, so cowardly, so ignoble? The success of such a
story does not depend on the writer eliciting the reader's
sympathies (always a tricky and difficult business when dealing
with a mass audience). He must be able to mystify the
reader. The problems of genuinely mystifying the reader
will be discussed under the "puzzling-identity" category.
category:plot lines
Category:information