Suspense, Hope, Fear, and The Death Penalty

I recently joined the ranks of suspense novelists and while I didn't give the word suspense much thought as I was writing, I've since given it quite a bit of brain time. I suppose seeing your book called "A Novel of Suspense" on the cover will do that.

While suspense is a literary category that can embrace many different types of stories, it is also one of the most natural of elements in the real world. The broad definition I've come to these days is that suspense is simply a recognition of the fact that we don't really, on a moment to moment basis, know what the hell's going to happen next. Of course our natural defenses, the same ones that limit what noises come into our ears or what sights come into our eyes, keep the lid on this what's-coming anxiety and allow us to function. But then there are the moments, the ones most often exploited by writers, in which we can't deny that we are in the dark about the future, that we don't know what's around the corner.

The "what-ifs" that kick off so much of our mystery/thriller/suspense fiction are often rooted in our anxieties about life itself. What if I woke up in a strange land? What if I opened my freezer and found a severed hand there? What if an airplane dropped out of the sky and wiped out my back yard? The beauty of finding these oddities between covers is that we have some assurance the author does know what's going to happen next and will lead us through the suspense to the safety of knowledge.

Religion of course exploits our existential suspense by reminding us often that we don't know what's going to happen big time, as in after the lights go out. Cotton Mather's metaphor for our unknowing was to imagine us literally suspended over hellfire. The assurance of some sort of afterlife which is at the core of so many religions is a way to keep our angst at bay (and our butts in the pews).

Which brings me to hope and fear. In our tussle with the suspense of life itself we often see fear of the unknown as the black hat and hope for the future as the white hat. What I think I've come to see is that (sorry Mr. President) hope and fear are simply different names for the approach we take to our open-ended life. Both are essentially admissions that we are moving into the unknown and we have deep doubts about where we're going. Whether we're chewing our fingernails or crossing our fingers we're still in the same relationship to the future.

The only people immune from the agonies of this sort of suspense are those who carry a true faith in themselves, the goodness of life, the nature of reality, a God, or anything that allows them confidence without resorting to either fear or hope. In my travels I found a higher than average number of such people in a place you wouldn't suspect would hold any: death row.

For a book of interviews with death row inmates I went around the country and spoke to a lot of the condemned. This was in 1978, there had been few executions then, but the punishment loomed for all, the process was akin to a lottery, and the suspense of the situation, which I admit I've exploited several times in films for which I wrote the screenplay, is palpable. As one death row inmate said of the punishment, it's not the slap but the anticipation of the slap that is so corrosive to the human spirit.

Yet I found a number of inmates who faced their fate with uncommon equanimity. At the time I thought it was simply a question of acceptance, of giving in to the sentence of the court. But I think I understand it differently now. In sentencing a man or woman to death, in setting a day and hour when they will die, we in effect suspend suspense for them. Of course in the way we carry out death sentences there are many stops and starts and very few of those we condemn are actually executed, so there is that uncertainty. But a number of inmates, independently, told me that the moment they heard a judge intone something to the effect of "hang by your neck until dead," they experienced an out-of-body experience, watched the proceedings from on high, distanced themselves, and found a certain peace.

And this makes sense when you realize that we live in suspense because we live in bodies. When we leave these bodies the suspense is over. The death-sentenced inmate died, to some extent, at the moment of his sentencing.

I'm completely opposed to the death penalty under any circumstances whatsoever. But I am fascinated by the fact that sometimes the ultimate punishment might have the counter-intuitive effect of abolishing suspense. Of course thinking about this leads to one of the hoariest of what-ifs, i.e. what if you knew the date and time of your death? Most renderings of this have the protagonist working hard to avoid his/her fate, to make sure the what-if doesn't lead to that horror of horrors for the suspense novelist, a world, a character certain of the future.

So, having just joined this circle of suspense novelists, I'm all for keeping uncertainty and anxiety in our lives. And it hits me that this is another good reason, though no more are really needed, to abolish the death penalty immediately.

Doug Magee is a writer, photographer and filmmaker living in New York's East Harlem. He is a graduate of Amherst College and Union Theological Seminary. He is the author of Slow Coming Dark, a book of interviews with death row inmates, and What Murder Leaves Behind, profiles of families of murder victims. In addition he has written three children's books.

His films include the HBO movie Somebody Has to Shoot The Picture and the Showtime movie Beyond The Call.

His first novel, Never Wave Goodbye was published in June 2010.