Mystery writer John Shannon entered the Bakersfield College Fireside Room on Nov. 9 and was astounded at the large turnout for his speech on the American mystery genre.
Shannon, who would later reveal he is currently working on a mystery novel about Bakersfield, warmed up the crowd with a quote from John Banville, the recent winner of Britain’s Man Booker Prize.
“The sports stars and the movie stars are used to having the searchlighttrained on them, but when the searchlight is trained on us we tend to winceand utter faint squeaks of distress,” quoted Shannon.
Shannon went on to introduce the mystery genre he writes under by first distinguishing it in comparison to other types of mystery fiction.
“It’s uniquely American,” said Shannon after pointing out that it’s not “the English Manor house mystery we all know,” and the “police procedural” commonly portrayed on television.
Shannon explained that he didn’t want to criticize those types of stories, but he just doesn’t think they say anything about America.
In Shannon’s work, he explained that he tries to deal with real issues instead of creating intellectual puzzles. His acclaimed book series revolves around main character, Jack Liffey, and social problems indigenous to Southern California.
Shannon, who often thinks of Jack Liffey as a sort of alter-ego, expressed that one of the things that attracted him to this line of genre was the distinctive characters.
“You can create a character that’s braver and stronger than you are,” said Shannon, “who sets out … not to save the world, but at best to unearth and acknowledge in some existential way
that there are relations of power that should be set right, but can’t.”
The central purpose of his books and his characters, according to Shannon and others, nearly reanimate the classic Raymond Chandler mysteries of the 1930s and 1940s.
Shannon said his up-and-coming Jack Liffey novel will take place in Bakersfield.
Various audience members asked, when Shannon allowed questions, wanting to know more about the direction of Shannon’s work regarding Bakersfield, but Shannon responded that he still had only a vague idea, and that he’s hoping that local residents such as the BC college students will approach him with “an issue that is emblematic.”
Aside from wanting to know about Shannon’s spin on Bakersfield, a majority of the audience members who asked Shannon questions specifically expressed
an interest in his profession as a writer.
He said that he regarded his writing as an expensive hobby, and that he keeps a day job as writer for medical education videos.
Shannon gave an assortment of tips on writer’s block for those eager to know, and how to approach research, which according to Shannon can involve “making stuff up” at times.
Shannon, however, approached the calling of a writer very seriously in terms of money and purpose.
“Be a writer because there’s something inside you that wants to be said. Don’t do it for the money,” Shannon said.