RE: RARA-AVIS: the bottoms

From: Robison Michael R CNIN ( Robison_M@crane.navy.mil)
Date: 02 May 2002


carrie talks about lansdale's bottom: I felt the same way, for what it's worth. There are some great individual scenes and beautiful passages, Lansdale invokes the setting very well, but overall it felt too derivative of "Mockingbird" and Faulkner. The child's narration felt really contrived and blessed with convenient eavesdroppings
(in a way that Scout Finch's never does), most of the characterizations felt

"off", and the whodunit was strikingly inept (I make a point of never making

any effort to "figure out the mystery," so when I get it way ahead of time I

consider that a flaw). That's the only Lansdale I've read, but I have heard

that it's totally atypical of his work so I've got a couple of Hap&Leonards in my TBR pile

**********************************************************

_rumble tumble_ is the only lansdale i've read, and it was pretty darned good. had some good characters in it and an OK plot. a liberal amount of ass-kicking. and, of course, it had a midget in it too. its hard not to like a book with a midget. last hardboiled midget i remember was in the great american novel, earl thomp- son's _garden of sand_.

miker

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