That's what I feel is the main problem with Leonard. He
seems
a tad bit too CUTE/GLIB for my taste. I hate to resort to
this but I
must make a film comparison.
Look at Tarantino's general use of music and pop
culture
in his films and the overwhelming, obtrusiveness
of Tarantino -director takes precedent over character
development. Where is in a film like BOOGIE NIGHTS,
director
Paul Anderson Thomas uses a similar po-mo-ironic
aesthetic:uber violence set to pop standards.
But the use of the power ballad SISTER CHRISTIAN in B.G
is used as a way of reflecting how infantile and
cultural
tacky the drug-dealer/coke-head really is.
Tarantino's use of music/pop culture almost always
reeks
of self-aggrandizment/self-consciouness. In the same way
that
certain mystery writers become overly schematic in
their
use of research to the point where the book feels at
though
it was written to fit the research, but that is another topic
for
another time.
While, Willeford's quirkiness (which is becoming an overused
term in
these po-mo absurdist, Lynch times) almost always seems more
organic as
though he really knew that the best way to gerry-rig a home
made bedroom
alarm was to crumble large newspaper balls and lay them
around your bed (THE SHARK INFESTED CUSTARD)..
And in defense of Willeford's dark vision, I will counter
that
although he is a hard-boiled fatalist, his prose never
becomes ham-fisted and surly.
Hope I dont sound like I'm splitting aesthetic hairs here,
just
trying to help define my own personal tastes.
Christian Doellner
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