Carl Hiaasen, On Crime, Novels, and Satire

00:08 [Carl Hiaasen] People always say, are you crime novelist, are you mystery, are you thriller? All novels are about crime, some kind of crime, whether it's a crime of the heart, a crime of passion; whether it's a crime of betrayal, or a crime of grief; or whether it's a homicide or whether it's an arson or whether it's crime in the traditional sense what we think of crime. But it's all about crime,

00:30 crime and a conflict that's going with someone. So I don't buy the idea that you're either a crime writer or a traditional novelist. I just don't buy it. War is a crime, and I don't think anyone would call Catch-22 a crime novel. It's a satire about the most hideous of all crimes, and that's war. But it's also a hilariously funny, devastating book. And

01:00 that's the trick with satire, the kind of writing I do, is to bring that kind of an eye and make people laugh about something that can be pretty wretched, in this case, in the case of the last book I wrote, Stormy Weather, you had a hurricane, a devastating hurricane. But in a way the satire, what you write about the unsavory elements who come to Florida after a hurricane, the predators, the carpetbaggers who moved in after Hurricane Andrew, for example. I mean, the satire becomes a

01:30 weapon of outrage. It all comes from anger, it all comes from a certain amount of outrage over what was happening. In rendering it, if you make people laugh you're also making the point that, I think, that this is serious stuff and this is how we deal with it. Laughter is a great defensive mechanism. The alternative is to go stark, raving mad.