> Try Fredric Brown's THE SCREAMING MIMI or THE
FABULOUS CLIPJOINT. He has a
> way of combining character and plot in such a way
that I actually felt
kind
> of screwed up for a couple of days after reading
these (especially MIMI.)
thanks to encouragement from other rara-avians, I put in an
order for an old hardback copy of The Screaming Mimi, and I'm
thrilled with it so far. He really has something in the style
that I think is great and screwed up, as you say here. I
think it's interesting to go back to writers like this and
see how they fit into the world 30 or 40 years after they've
written. And Brown fits like a glove (with a thumb
missing).
Same with a movie I saw on TCM the other night, Kiss Me
Deadly, from a Spillane book. After hearing how it didn't
make much of a splash when it was first released but
eventually was seen as a noir classic, I watched and thought
it's even more interesting in 2000. The plot is, pretty much,
falling apart throughout the whole thing, and the ending is
ridiculous and therefore perfect.
I'd like to find more works like these, Brown, weird film
noir, etc. , where the writers were just out of their gourds
and would probably fit in more today than they did in their
own times. Any suggestions?
Neil Smith
-- # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 24 Jan 2000 EST