Philosophizing and pontificating by authors in their novels gets more Intense when they get older and successful

It could be reasonably argued that the more power someone has, the less accountable they may be to others who would help direct their actions, and the more often they use it to serve themselves. This can be to enrich themselves, often unethically or illegally, or just to put forward their “wisdom”. It may be wiser than your wisdom, or not, or really dumb, but if they have the power then they can put it out there. 

You may think I am talking about the President of the United States, and from what I have written above I certainly could be. Especially the first part, corruptly enriching himself. He is, to use the technical term, a ganif (Yiddish, for thief; plural ganevim). Or I could be talking about the new (and this adjective should be understood in the context of me being an old person for who anything that has come about in at least the last 30 years is “new) profession of “on-line influencer”. These folks mostly do the second, proclaim their “wisdom”, at least insofar as what brands of crap (this is again a technical term, although English) you should buy. Or what you should believe, on health, on politics, on immigration, and especially on conspiracies. These folks generally get paid for making recommendations for products (“crap”) but it is not, strictly speaking, corrupt; they are being paid for work that they do that is advantageous to the company paying them, just like TV commercials. It may be corrupt if they are being paid surreptitiously, such as from a political foundation that wants to encourage their viewpoint.

Anyway, I am not really talking about either of these things, applicable as those thoughts may be. I am talking about an old (after all, I am old) genre, books. In my non-scientific observations, the authors of successful series of novels get to do things that their editors and publishers likely would not have allowed them to do (or at least with so much leeway) in their earlier books. I am specifically referring to “pontificating”, sharing the lead character’s (and presumably the author’s) worldview and philosophy and observations, at length, and usually with minimal or no real relationship to the plot of the book. This (again, in my observation, and I’ll stop writing IMO but you can assume it applies to this whole piece) kind of creeps in gradually, manifesting in small amounts in earlier books and, by the time the writer is old and really successful, tending to so dominate the book that the story (plot) seems almost incidental. That is, it increases from a few sentences here and there, to paragraphs, to pages, and so on.

There is nothing at all wrong with this; as is clear from this piece, we old people like to share what we think is our wisdom, or at least our observations and opinions. Certainly, famous and successful authors may have wise things to share, in articles and even in books. My issue is that when this occurs not in an ostensible treatise but a novel with a story, it can be at least distracting from the story, and is often so pervasive and extensive that I find myself giving up and going to another book. I feel it is a little sad to give up, but I only do it if the philosophizing/pontificating has been going on for a while and shows little sign of letting up and permitting the plot to take over; I try another book.

Most recently, this has occurred with two writers I have depended upon for intelligent entertainment, Walter Mosely and John Burdett. Both are close to my age; Mosely is 72 and Burdett 74. Mosley has several heroes, the most famous being Easy Rawlins, but the book I recently put down featured King Oliver (“Been wrong so long it feels like right”, 2025). Maybe I’ll try the latest 2025 Easy Rawlins book; maybe it is the character, Oliver, rather than Mosely, who is given to philosophy. But I doubt it.  Burdett’s books are (mostly) set in Bangkok, featuring Thai police detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, and the one I have stopped reading in the middle is the most recent of those, “The Bangkok Asset”, 2015 (over 10 years old, but the latest in the series).

This is not a new phenomenon, as it has happened before with other authors, and I felt disappointed to let them go. Maybe the first books I stopped reading for this reason were the Dave Robichaux stories by James Lee Burke (89 years old). Also I found that re-reading the Travis McGee books by John MacDonald (died at 72 in 1986) was almost painful for the same reason. And even the many protagonists of British writer Dick Francis (d. 2010, 89) were not above extensive preaching. For me his opinions were even more objectionable, as they tended to be conservative and elitist, usually self-made successful men (always men) decrying those who were not as smart and hard-working as they, and the fact that society allowed them to nonetheless continue to live, if not thrive. I tend to like more criticism of those who do thrive, often handsomely, despite being neither particularly smart nor hard-working, but somewhere on the privileged-birth, corrupt-to-evil spectrum.

There are, of course, others who fall into this category  in this genre (in case anyone does not know, almost all crime/mystery/detective stories) and I am sure others. And there are many crime writers who do not have this particular characteristic. Agatha Christie (d 1976, 86) stories are often wordy and can be tedious, but not for this reason. The observations on the world of, say, Hercule Poirot, are terser.  Nero Wolfe, the detective written by Rex Stout (d 1975, 89) certainly has opinions and observations, including political views that I sometimes disagree with, but they are usually expressed in sentences, not pages. One example I like and often use is “This is a pleasant surprise, Archie. I would not have believed it. That of course is the advantage of being a pessimist; a pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.” I am not always pessimistic, but more than some, and find comfort in this bon mot. Anyway, if not literally a mot it is two short sentences, not pages of worldview.

Indeed, Stout’s Wolfe books have another characteristic that I value in reading novels. Everything that happens on a page occurs after what happened on the previous page. Yes, they talk about past events, for example in reconstructing the evidence and describing the crime, but the live action is continuous, and there are not flashbacks or subplots to confuse simple minds like mine.

Obviously, some, many, people like subplots and flashbacks or even regularly alternating timelines. Even me, if it is well and not too confusingly done; one of my favorite novels (not a crime novel) is “Leonardo’s Bicycle” by Paco Ignacio Taibo II, which has about a half-dozen stories going on, but they alternate chapters and it is not incumbent upon one to understand each in order to follow the others. Also, of course, there are undoubtedly some who love the insertion of long philosophical text in the middle of their mystery stories, and think that this is one of the best things about MacDonald, or Burke, or Francis, or more recent Mosely and Burdett. After all, this piece is just my opinion.

And, while an old if not successful or celebrity author, it is my blog so I get to put it out there!