ENDPAPER
Diabolical art
PRADEEP SEBASTIAN
WHAT, exactly, is Ira Levin's notion of suspense? It works on the deliciously paranoid theme that no one is who they seem to be. It's the suspense that arises from ambiguity which is at the core of every Levin thriller. Are those dotty, old people in the apartment next-door actually modern-day witches or just nosy, over-friendly neighbours? Is the handsome, rich bachelor upstairs (whom the heroine is falling in love with) an electronic gadget geek or a psychopathic voyeur? Can an entire town of husbands be secretly plotting to replace their wives with Barbie dolls or do they just have very devoted wives? The mechanics of Levin's suspense was shaped by two key novels about ambiguity and paranoia from the 1940s and 50s: Cornell Woolrich's The Bride Wore Black and Jack Finney's Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But Levin put his own original spin on it: diabolical plotting, a knowing, sophisticated urban (very New York-ish) wit and, suspense so fine, you could cut your skin on it.
The first time I read A Kiss Before Dying, I found myself coiled up, my stomach in knots, after just 50 pages. Unable to stand such remorseless suspense, I had to put the book down. No book since then has left me so weak with suspense. Finishing it, I knew it had to be the greatest suspense novel ever written. Listen, don't take my word for it. Read it and see for yourself. (His books are always in print and second hand copies of Kiss are always turning up on pavements for 25 rupees). Let me give you one instance of how Levin structures suspense (no spoilers ahead, I promise) from the first part of Kiss. The book is in three parts. All through part one the identity of the killer is concealed from you. That, of course, is standard. Levin's original touch was to narrate the story from the killer's point of view. The killer is always simply referred to as "he". "His plans had been running so beautifully, so goddamned beautifully, and now SHE was going to smash them all", is the first line of the book. The situation, you soon realise, is simply this: lying in bed with his girlfriend, "he" is contemplating ways to murder her.
Now, I'm perfectly aware that Agatha Christie also got her killer to narrate one of her books (I'm not saying which — why ruin it for those who haven't read it yet?) but that was in first person, while Levin's intentions are different. It pays off brilliantly in the second part. When the murder investigation begins, the heroine discovers there were three young men on campus who had dated the victim that semester. One of them is probably the killer. The problem with finding out whodunit is that they all seem to share some of "his" characteristics. Levin has craftily strewn enough details about "him" in part one to make you think that all of them could be "him". The moment of revelation is more potent than anything dreamt by Hitchcock. For most mystery writers the whodunit aspect is their plot's climax; Levin tosses off the killer's identity midway through the book because he has more suspense up his sleeve. Whodunit is only one of the pleasures afforded by A Kiss Before Dying — Levin means to toy with us: "it's him", we declare to ourselves. A little later we say, "no, no, this must be him", and a little later, "this has got to be him."
It is with Rosemary's Baby that Levin hits upon what was to become his trademark suspense: paranoia. A young, pregnant New York housewife begins to feel that their apartment neighbours — an old couple — are plotting against her. Is she paranoid or are is there really a conspiracy against her? It is Levin's masterpiece. Its graphic cinematic quality is often mistakenly attributed by critics to Levin's long experience with plays and television scripts, but it lies in Levin's early ambition to be an illustrator. It's the kind of book you have to read a second time — indeed, several times — to see how the author did it. One of the true pleasures of reading Levin's thrillers is their re-readability. The sequel, Son of Rosemary is vintage Ira Levin and is not be missed.
This tantalising sense of a seesawing paranoia is equally effective in The Stepford Wives: is the independent, creative New York housewife imagining that her new, dull, suburban neighbouring housewives are not human but mechanical dolls fabricated by their clever husbands? Or will she, too, eventually, become a Stepford wife? Proof of Levin's genius lies in the book's climax: when the terrified, paranoid heroine demands that the Stepford husbands prove that their Stepford wives are human — creatures of flesh and blood — by asking one of the wives to cut herself with a knife so she can see a little blood, Levin ends the scene just before the knife presses the flesh. Levin knows suspense can never be literal. It is far more suspenseful, far more terrifying to keep wondering, to leave our imagination to it.
Sliver is A Kiss Before Dying meets Rosemary's Baby. It toys with the reader about the identity of the killer in the fiendish way Kiss does and surrounds the book with the eerie, claustrophobic mood of paranoia that Rosemary's Baby had by setting it in a Manhattan high-rise apartment. His "Veronica's Room" and "Deathtrap" are two of the most electrifying, diabolical suspense plays ever written for the stage. While Levin's work has been highly influential, few writers have actually dared to imitate him — either because they don't have his brilliance, wit and slight of hand or because suspense that is so subtle, so sophisticated, doesn't sell anymore. Six books that pay tribute to his notion of suspense are: Brooks Standwood's The Glow, Craig Jones's Blood Secrets, Russell H. Greenan's It Happened in Boston?, Thomas Tryon's The Other, John Farris' All Heads Turn When The Hunt Goes By and Laird Koenig's The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane.
Levin's thrillers are not about "whodunit" but "who-will-do-it". Suspense, not shock, is what Levin is after. He is more interested in the process of suspense, its nuances. And he builds it with small, sure nudges and stifled shrieks. His misdirection is subtle, even comic, never obvious or guessable. He sets up cunning red herrings to heighten our sense of paranoia: characters and situations remain eerily ambiguous till the end. Most suspense novelists are content with a single layer of suspense in their plots. Levin's genius is to shade the plot with several layers of suspense that can leave you (pleasurably) in knots. Levin writes sparingly — one book in five years. I can't wait to see what he'll do next.
pradeepsebastian@hotmail.com
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