>It's not for me to tell anyone how to read Willeford
(or anything) - but
>if you do read him expecting realism and logical
continuity you are
>setting yourself up for an almost sure disappointment.
As someone
Cool beans. I don't require logical continuity, and Willeford
certainly
obliges. He sends Hoke off on rabbit trails that end nowhere
--
sometimes in the unknown swamps of Florida itself. OK by me.
Hokey
dokey. Moseley moseys off into the never-neverland of the
baking Florida
sun.
>pointed out (James Rogers?) he has more in common with
the "magical
>realists" (Rulfo, Garcia Marquez) and even with
certain absurdists
>(Queneau, Bioy Casares, Peter Handke) than with the
hardboiled school of
>action that is the nominal subject of this
list.
What is a "magical realist"? (Here's your chance to shine.)
Is this
important or can I forget it now? There's *nothing* realistic
about
Moseley. He's got his protagonist, the Hokester, out killing
people in
cold blood and being promoted to lieutenant because of it.
He's got his
average guys poisoning dogs with poison dollops of meat from
hollow
canes. He's got his bad guys as psychopaths with slick but
unconvincing
speeches. Where's the realism?
>By the way, _The Shark-Infested Custard_ is one of my
favorite
>Willefords. His use of dialogue in this novel could
serve as a textbook
>on the subject - it's perfectly nuanced and placed in
each and every
>instance.
Yeah, he was good at writing dialog. Too bad he's dead.
-- Ned Fleming # # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/.