Mark wrote:
>I think there's probably distinct advantages to both
outsider and
>insider status. Outsiders could very well recognize
and highlight taken
>for granted characteristics; insiders could have
access to levels an
>outsider would never get to see. It's the old
emic/edic debate in the
>social sciences.
I agree, but I think there are all sorts of ways to define an
outsider. Alienation, whether cultural, geographical, racial,
sexual, social or whatever, and even if it's only imagined,
might just be a defining characteristic of anyone who dares
to create.
But forget sex cats, what the hell's emic/edic?
Sounds like a duet album by two rappers...
And Juri wrote:
>But Eliot really seems and reads more English/British
than American.
>Chandler is unmistakably American in style and
context.
But does that make him an American writer? Or just a good
mimic? Would a foreign writer working in an "unmistakably
American... style and context" therefore automatically become
an American writer?
And if there is some sort of American style, what is it? And
how does it correspond with such different "unmistakably
American" writers as,say, Norman Mailer, James Fenimore
Cooper, Erica Jong, Mark Twain, Anne Tyler, John Updike and
Danielle Steele?
I can see certain themes and issues constantly recurring in a
society's literature, but an actual literary style?
Compared to his contemporaries in the genre, Chandler seems
much more formal (British?) than his pulp buddies,
particularly in his descriptive passages.
And likewise, what is an American context? Do you mean
setting?
A writer is the sum of his experience. To zero in on one part
of that experience and dismiss another seems dishonest. It's
a great big mix and match world. Nothing is pure, nothing is
unmistakable. Break out the hypens, and live with it.
The only thing Chandler is, truly and unmistakably, is
Chandler.
--
Kevin Burton Smith The Thrilling Detective Web Site http://www.thrillingdetective.com
Let's go to the movies! Plus new fiction from Hugh Lessig, John Alvar, O'Neil De Noux and Graham Powell. Plus web comics: Odd Jobs and The Damnation Gambit and soon, the return of Femme Noir. -- # 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/ .
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