Thanks, Jim.
Hmmmm, "...effusive, overblown, pretentious dreck." Almost
sounds kind of like a return to Thomas Wolfe, doesn't it? The
kind of reaction you describe below makes me glad I decided
to stop with an M.A. and to steer my career away from
academia 20 years ago. Jesus, my favorite critic back in grad
school was Leslie Fiedler. These days I run into young M.A.
and Ph.D. candidates in English who've never heard of him.
I'm the kind of schmo who still thinks that books like THE
ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN and ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S
NEST have literary merit. Ah, the perfidy of academic
fashion. I guess we all can agree on one thing: whatever
hardboiled is, it ain't Thomas Wolfe.
Later...Kip
------------------------- Hi Kip,
No anti-Carver at this stop, though I
admit to reading him always in small doses. Anti-Carver
sentiments have been on parade through writing programs and
college English Departments for a decade, and the reaction
against Carver and minimalism has blessed all with the
effusive, overblown, pretentious dreck flowing from so many
University literary journals these days.
At times Carver was solid hard-boiled
though I doubt he saw it as a goal.
His voice like that of John Gregory Dunne, Nelson
Algren, Scott Smith, Jim Harrison, Joyce Carol Oates, and
others not usually classified as hard-boiled reveal patches
of the world where, toughness rules but people "stand up"
anyway, where hopes are leavened by despair, and experience
smashes holes through optimism. As Kevin or someone else said
here recently, it's the center of the writing that makes its
hard-boiled, not the presence of a detective, the inclusion
of cynical dialogue, or any of the other "hallmarks" of the
genre.
Jim
Blue
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