> Neither do I, for that matter, and Cali has never
seemed bleak to me on my
> occasional sojourns to that state. However, Atlanta,
where I currently
> reside, is a nasty little town (I am encouraged by
the recent citations of
> books set here; I am in pursuit . . .).
I certainly have found my muse of dereliction and despair in
Atlanta.
I think the city has many of the same elements of
incongruity,
conflict and decay that drove many of the sensibility of the
early
hard-boiled writers.
Here, you have the basic problems of poverty, racism, and
agrarian
collapse with an overlay of the mobile middle class spending
money
right and left, wild ass development and, to liven things up
even
futher, a nice collection of boom town psychos.
I don't think we are alone in this profile, but some places
are a
little nastier than others.
Of course, some very great noir fiction has been written
about sleepy
little backwaters where nothing was going on but a lot of no
good.
Anyone see the film "Diggstown?"
Maybe we should have a contest: Why the place I live is a
great
location for hard-boiled fiction. The loser will be forced to
write a
hard-boiled novel.
Fred
------------------------------
Down on Ponce by Fred Willard
fwillard@mindspring.com
http://fwillard.home.mindspring.com/
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