>I'd be interested in taking up this topic and hearing
what other people have
>to say. One might ask the question of flim noir
too--where the urban
>landscape (slick streets, concrete buildings, etc.)
makes a big visual
>difference. A few random thoughts. The city has more
chance for
>anonymity--for the loner to get lost, disappear (think
how Woolrich's stuff
>depends on this factor). Capital accumulates to a more
grandiose degree in the
>city, which allows more easily for people like the
Sternwoods et al. Country/
>small town crime novels frequently seem to have a
different ethos (e.g., Mario
>Balzac knows everyone); perhaps they are a sort on
anti-bucolic--things are
>corrupt, not lovely, in the country. Finally, the more
traditional hard-
>boiled seems to be about the violence of
society/social forces/individuals.
>Something like _Deliverance_ is also about
nature--perhaps that is more in the
>gothic tradition too. Thoughts?
"Out of the Past," the Mitchum movie, provides perhaps the
prototypical
example of the tension between myth-city and myth-country
life. The mute
(quiet country living, order) with a fishing lure on the
gun-hand of the
citified killer (chaos) is a turning point of the film.
Dickey turned "Deliverance" inside out in "To the White Sea,"
the story
of a downed American bombardier(?) during the fire-bombing of
Tokyo.
Instead of civilized man invading chaotic nature, psychotic
country man
invades the environs of city man.
-- 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/.