I too had mixed feelings about this week's reading--some
sloppy strokes,
but hey, give me a few dead bodies and I'm easily
entertained. I would
like to respond to a couple of Tom Sweeney's remarks. I agree
that the
genre is getting bogged down by too much "character
development"--for
lack of a better term (e.g., the ACA, 12-stepping detective,
who juggles
his meaningful and complicated relationships between spats of
socially
conscious investigating). In the two stories this week,
however, that
development seemed to be built in a corny, hackneyed, cheesy
sort of
way, which I sort of liked, while recognizing its
shortcomings (i.e., I
did not have to be told lots of details--instead, just the
cap loved his
good wife, she's dead, and now he's going wacky). One thing I
think
that Tom is maybe wrong about is his generalization about
length. Going
back to Chandler and Hammett (which I guess isn't really
fair), one
remembers that they wrote some long stories that were pretty
strong.
Some talk of movies this week. I saw one last week that's a
fun period
piece of sorts, and well in the genre: _SHAFT_(1971?) It also
raises, I
think, that earlier topic of "social critique" in the
hard-boiled. The
film nods at, then backs away from, issues of drugs, Black
nationalism,
etc. In the end, you're all right if you wear slick clothes,
have a
cool pad, etc.
Best,
Doug Levin
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