Marianne,
I've been out of the loop most of this week, so I've been
cherry-picking messages, and missed this when it first came
out:
> Right. So? I can readily admit that I
find
> vocations or compulsions
> much more interesting than "jobs". It's
what
> somebody MAKES of
> the job, you see.
If a given story was about a man who was, say, a lawyer or a
doctor, but his working life was not part of the story, then
one could say that his job made no difference. He might just
as easily have been a greengrocer or a dentist.
If a story is about a man who is in a particular profession
and the story is about that man working at his profession,
then the profession is central to the story.
If significant attempts to get the technical details of that
job right are made by the author, so that it's as accurate as
a piece of fiction can be, then we can conclude that the
technical accuracy with which the profession is presented is
central. This is the case, by Rankin's own admission, with
Rankin.
A police procedural isn't so much the story of a crime, or
even the story of the solution to a crime, as it is the story
of a person doing a job of work. The Rebus stories are
stories about a man doing his job.
> Dear heavens, Jim Doherty, you think that MOBY
DICK
> is a WHALING
> PROCEDURAL?
Whatever else MOBY DICK is, religious allegory or thumping
great tale of maritime adventure, it's a thoroughly gripping,
thoroughly authentic depiction of how the crews of 19th
Century whaling vessels went about their work. Significantly,
Melville crewed on three different whaling vessels (just as
Wambaugh served on the LAPD, Wainwright on the County
Constabulary of Yorkshire's West Riding, and Petievitch on
the US Secret Service), and called it his personal university
education.
JIM DOHERTY
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