The Tragedy and Comedy of Settings
The Tragedy and Comedy of Settings
A Guest Post By Priscilla Paton
Location, location, location. In fiction as in life, location shapes character, determines sites of conflict, and becomes a destination that ends a dream or fulfills a hope.
As I write this, a white woman in a whitish town, sections of Minneapolis and St. Paul are razed. Piles of rubble, signs sprayed on boarded windows like “Don’t burn—people live here” and “Want Peace, Prosecute Police.” The damage from the rioting and looting that overwhelmed peaceful protests is the price paid for centuries of racial inequities, inequities that led up to the police killing of George Floyd. (The killing occurred in Minneapolis’s diverse Powderhorn neighborhood, which like most of Minnesota sits on land that once belonged to the native Dakota people.) Inequitable practices were updated in the twentieth century with discriminatory housing policies. Lenders “redlined” districts as undesirable because nonwhites or immigrants lived there, while prohibiting those populations from moving to nice “white” suburbs. Where a person lived, attended school, and shopped for groceries impacted safety, academic achievement, and health. Redlining has been banned; the privileged, however, still seek out “the good zip codes.”
Disclosure: I do not write housing policy but the Twin Cities Mystery series, which delves into social issues while taking comic turns. A running joke in the newest, Should Grace Fail, is that characters claim to have it good by saying, “it’s almost Edina.” That’s a fine zip code. Another disclosure: although I was physically distant from the rioting, I was not emotionally or morally gated off from the trauma. For weeks I couldn’t stomach meals, I lost weight, I lost sleep. My discomfort was but a blip in the mass of grief and rage.
In the fictive realm, my detectives Erik Jansson and Deb Metzger must deal with their own and the populace’s grief and rage at atrocities. The detectives won’t be touchy-feely about it because they were raised in Iowa. In Noir, that’s the source of innocents who are victimized in the corrupt city. But instead of the innocent coming from Iowa, why not have the tough investigators hail from there? Or are the naïve from Ohio? Idaho? If you have to think about that one, you’re coastal.
Anyway, the detectives work in the greater Twin Cities metro area of three-and-a-half million residents, residents who within steps can reach a park, a lake, or a river. The urban and the natural commingle, key to the plot in Where Privacy Dies. Details bring the setting to the senses, and I discover those through drive-arounds, which double as an excuse to eat out. For Should Grace Fail, I consumed duck-fat french fries at the Wilde Café, brunch in the shadow of Betty Danger’s Ferris wheel, and a gravy sandwich at The Stockmen’s Truckstop. On site, you overhear conversations and smell the diesel. See who doesn’t have any place to go other than the street.
The geekiest thing I did was participate in a 2018 home tour. The aim was to display potential in “borderline” areas that could thrive with small investments. There were high-end sites as well. People generally visited a few properties in their price range. I toured thirty, including a subsidized apartment complex in a neighborhood shaped by redlining, North Minneapolis. If you know North Minneapolis only from the news, you see it as a Black enclave of poverty and violence. On tour, I saw that North Minneapolis is a grouping of neighborhoods with tree-lined streets and residents of many colors. I smelled barbeque. The hosts at the apartment complex had the implied task of making people like me feel welcome and safe. (I’d parked my European model car between vehicles on blocks.) I toured the building with white retirees who had donated to the housing initiative. The view of Minneapolis from the green rooftop was amazing.
This tour did not make me all wise, not even almost, about the Twin Cities. However, I do have an enhanced perspective to help me develop imaginary crimes in plausible settings. Should Grace Fail was completed before the shocks of 2020; the next in the series must convey something of the rawness. My detectives will not start from a happy place.
That housing tour ended with a visit to a new build near Lake Harriet—not on, which would have jacked the price up to a million. Single family, over three thousand square feet. It featured an interior lap pool where you swam against a manufactured current. I wondered, fictionally of course, if you messed with the setting, could the lap pool become a murder weapon?
The Tragedy and Comedy of Settings
A Guest Post By Priscilla Paton
Priscilla grew up on a dairy farm in Maine, a state of woods, lakes, and rivers. She now lives in Minnesota, another state of woods, lakes, and rivers, not far from urban Minneapolis and St. Paul. She received a B.A. from Bowdoin College, a Ph.D. in English Literature from Boston College, and was a college professor. She has previously published a children’s book, Howard and the Sitter Surprise, and a book on Robert Frost and Andrew Wyeth, Abandoned New England. She participates in community advocacy and literacy programs, takes photos of birds, and contemplates (fictional) murder. The first in the Twin Cities Mystery series, Where Privacy Dies, was a finalist for a 2018 Foreword Indies Book Award.
The Tragedy and Comedy of Settings
A Guest Post By Priscilla Paton
