cooper (jane@almaludo.freeserve.co.uk)
Wed, 6 Oct 1999 21:02:55 +0100
I've just finished reading Happy Like Murderers by Gordon
Burn which is an account of the Rosemary/Fred West murders
which occurred during the 80s and early 90s in Gloucester,
England.Then resuming reading HB crime I was struck by the
thought that "Thank God, this isn't real" Even though the
books and subject matter may be grim, they are only the
product of someones imagination and that's as far as it goes.
I know that never in my life am I going to be rampaging
through the deep south, shooting bad guys in the company of
an equally bad compadre, or chasing any type of bad guys for
that matter.We know that although there will be lots of
innocent blood spilt there will be some kind of reckoning,
and even if they do get away with it, it's only a book. Very
few of us will be affected by violent death in the real
world, but it's generally not going to be like in the book.
The victims in the book were never going to be rescued by the
FBI, the survivors are prisoners of the terrible life that
they endured, they didn't go and get large guns and blow the
sick f**** away. Love and fear, it's what keeps people
chained in violent relations and will always make real life
more Hard than anything we talk about here.The reality of
violent death is usually nasty, sordid and sad, it leaves
families broken, no-one usually tools up to go after the
baddies, the police won't often find any deep buried
consiracies linking the death to the the CIA or Columbian
drug barons or even some serial loony. It'll just be one sad
individual ending the life of another, to quote Gordon Burn
from the book of the same name "Somebody's husband,
somebody's son." Which is why I think that we read crime
fiction, it's whistling to keep the demons away. We know that
no matter what we read, real life is going to be even worse,
more grim, even more nasty. And fiction has got more hard
boiled, more violent and more gritty (my I hate that word) to
keep pace with the real world, but it's our way of keeping it
all at a distance. By the way I would recommend Mr Burn's
work to anyone who hasn't read it. I don't usually like true
crime, but he writes in a very unsensationalistic way and
makes you think about the truly vile crimes perpatrated by
the Wests, Peter Sutcliffe and Brady and Hindley and the
nature of evil. He has also written some excellent semi crime
fiction. I'm back on track now, and reading Rumble Tumble by
Joe Lansdale, which is as good as the rest of his stuff that
I've read.I envy you guys over there who have met him at
signings etc, I'd love to meet him, he sounds a really nice
(probably not the right word) well interesting guy.
Jane
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