I've been impressed with your reading efforts too Miker. So
much so that they've inspired me to attempt some similar
cross decade stuff, albeit on a much less ambitious scale.
Using the RA list and The TD website as guides I've sampled
the following in the last couple of months that would
correspond to this month and last month's RA themes: RED
HARVEST - Dashiell HammettTHE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE -
James M. CainTHEY SHOOT HORSES DON'T THEY - Horace
McCoyHEADED FOR A HEARSE - Jonathan Latimer Also, so far I'm
in the middle of: THE BLACK MASK BOYS - anthology - William
F. Nolan, editor(just completed the introductory section
which is a brief history of the magazine, along with the
section on Carroll John Daly and "Three Gun Terry" - the
first hard boiled story/detective character, according to
Nolan)and CRIME NOVELS - AMERICAN NOIR OF THE 1930's and 40's
- the Library of America volume that includes the Cain and
McCoy novels listed above, along with THIEVES LIKE US -
Edward Anderson (I'm in the middle of this one)THE BIG CLOCK
- Kenneth Fearing - yet to get toNIGHTMARE ALLEY - William
Lindsay Gresham - dittoI MARRIED A DEAD MAN - Cornell
Woolrich - ditto again I also read DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND
LONDON, by George Orwell and a collection of Orwell's essays.
While not technically hard boiled DAOIPAL is gritty and
realistic and very readable. It gives one a really good look
at the harshness of depression life, whether on a barely
subsistence wage job (Paris) or from the view of a wandering
hobo (London). It serves as a really good introduction to the
CRIME NOVELS - 30's and 40's in the sense that it helps give
a background to the noirish feeling of hopelessnes and
desparation prevalent in those novels. In the collections of
Orwell's ESSAYS he reviews a book which seems to be noir
based on his description - NO ORCHIDS FOR MISS BLANDISH
(1939). In this novel a young woman is kidnapped, beaten and
raped by the kidnap gang leader, rescued by police and
detectives hired by her father (who kill the gang members in
the process), but then commits suicide because she has grown
to enjoy the treatment provided by her captor (or possibly s!
he is pregnant by him). Orwell basically seems to dislike
this type of novel, which he perceives as a "glamorization of
crime" and unnecessarily brutal. He mentions that he is
reminded of William Faulkner's SANCTUARY by the book. To me
the anti-hero criminal protagonist and the decidedly downbeat
ending seem similar in some ways to either THE POSTMAN ALWAYS
RINGS TWICE and/or THEY SHOOT HORSES DON'T THEY?, leading me
to wonder if Orwell ever read either of those novels and if
so what his reaction was. Based on his negative comments
regarding NOFMB and the type of novel he saw it as
representing, I would venture to guess that he wouldn't have
cared for either. At any rate, I went off on a tangent
without meaning to. I'll try to lurk less and comment on some
of the above novels as I finish them. I'm definitely
interested in what the rest of you think about same. Steven
Harbin
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