Re: RARA-AVIS: "Simple Art..." stories

Jeff Lander (jeffl@darwin3d.com)
Sun, 17 Jan 1999 16:28:58 -0800 Been on vacation a while. But had time to read quite a bit
so I thought I would comment some on the reading since
Bill started it off. Here are some thoughts.

I agree with Bill that I noticed the romantic potential at
the end of several of the stories. Particularly "Guns at
Cyrano's" and "Nevada Gas." Those two end the Vintage Crime
collection I had on vacation and I found the upbeat ending of
the two interesting.

I don't know when "Smart-Aleck Kill" was written but it struck
me as fairly weak when compared with the rest of the ones I read.
The story wasn't as tight and the dialog was much more cliche.
I know I enjoyed it the least. Particularly compared against
"Spanish Blood" and "I'll Be Waiting" which I thought were
excellent.

Term I hadn't remembered or really understood. In "The King in
Yellow" the line goes:

"I get a bump once'n a while. Mostly a Dutch." A Dutch???

I also mentioned the issue of "Backfire" used during the shootout
in "I'll Be Waiting" in an earlier discussion. I saw it again used
in the same sort of context in another story though I didn't jot down
which. Clearly a way of describing a situation that was on Chandler's
mind at the time. I haven't really seen it used quite that way by
anyone else. I will see if I can find the other reference again.

Just saw "Out of Sight" again on DVD last night and watched the deleted
scenes. The idea of fish was more important in the deleted scenes as a
forecast to the diamond payoff in the fish tank. As all that was added
to the original book story for the movie, it struck me how the gimick of
diamonds in the fishtank as a payoff was so similar to "Goldfish." The
final cut of the movie didn't dwell on it so it didn't strike me when I
first saw it. As it is billed as "Hard Boiled" I wondered if there was
a screenwriting "nod" there.

Jeff

=============================================================
Jeff Lander Darwin 3D
jeffl@darwin3d.com http://www.darwin3d.com
Custom Realtime 3D Programming, Design, and Creation
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