On Thu, 31 Aug 2000, Doug Bassett wrote:
> I think the attempt is important, in other
words.
> Without it people get lazy, and they start pointing
at
> anything they like and calling it "hardboiled".
And
> that doesn't help the hb genre -- although
the
> remnants of the hb reputation do help these
faux-hb
> books.
That's just what has happened to "pulp", as it now has begun
to mean almost anything that isn't highly literal.
> Mr. Denton tries to draw an analogy with jazz
music.
> I'm pretty sure most people on rara-avis don't
listen
> to heavy metal music :) -- but that might be a
better
> fit. To an educated listener of the genre, there is
a
> qualitative difference between, say, Def Leppard
and
> Motorhead, and it's not simply that one of them
sucks
> and the other one is great. The difference, to
state
> it briefly, is that one of them (Motorhead) is
an
> authentic metal band, while the other is a pop
band
> faking it the metal arena. One of them believes
in
> their aesthetic, while the other is wrapping
the
> aesthetic around them in an attempt, basically,
to
> sell records.
I just couldn't keep my hands out of this. I don't like Def
Leppard at all and Motorhead I like only occasionally, but
you must mean that if someone is out there just to make
money, he can't do it good. Well, there are several examples
to prove this wrong: The Monkees's wonderful pop songs, with
perfect melodies and sufficient humour. The classical
Hollywood - who would say that they weren't out there just to
make money? Howard Hawks, the perfect auteur pinned so by the
French critics, was one of the most succesful American
directors of his time. And as for hardboiled literature, I
believe such favoured authors like Richard Prather or Brett
Halliday wanted just to make money. But they were good at
what they were doing. The whole pulp/paperback phenomenon was
about these writers making money. It was their profession. I
think it would be pretentious to say that they wrote the way
they did because they loved it, they were just good at what
they were doing and hence could do so marvellous things with
it.
Juri
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 01 Sep 2000 EDT