MikeR wrote:
>and THREE (snuck another one in on you, didn't i?
haha.),
>there is no way that i would ever describe those
passages
>[in black cherry blues] as "gratuitous scenery". they
established a >mood.
> thru metaphor they foreshadowed.
I should say I wasn't making the "gratuitous scenery" comment
in reference to BCB. Honestly don't remember what I didn't
like about that book, the scenery didn't make a big
impression on me either way. I was just replying to someone
else's comment about overdescription. I do agree in principle
that "nature" descriptions can be as relevant to character
development as
"civilization" descriptions, just that an author has to work
harder to make them relevant in anything but a superficial
way.
Which raises a question about good HB/noir books that aren't
set in cities. We tend to associate HB with urban life, but
there are certainly stories in the same vein set further from
civilization - I don't mean "Red Harvest" which is more of a
city story in microcosm; but Burke and Crumley and more
recently Steve Hamilton, who set most of their stories either
in the country or in really small towns.
responding to someone else's post that songwriters aren't
really poets
-finding this thread inspired me to put on my CD of Tom
Waits'
"swordfishtrombones" and if there's a distinction between his
lyrics and poetry, I don't really see it. Almost all of this
stuff would stand on its own. I mean, he has things like "Tom
Traubert's Blues" that definitely have to be songs, but a lot
of his songs are hybrids of music, poetry and sometimes even
what we'd call "flash fiction". I tend to agree that Dylan
remains more of a "songwriter"; though these are of course
subjective judgments with no implication of relative merit
-
Carrie
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