And lo, Jim declared:
>Snide but good-natured cracks about my
Jesuit
>education may now begin.
Nah, not me. I'm just gonna watch BLACK ROBE again. Now
THERE'S a hard-boiled western. And if I recall correctly, the
book wasn't so cozyish, either. It's like the darkside of the
Leatherstocking Tales. Nasty, nasty, nasty...
Anyway, I agree with you, Jim. If someone's amoral, they're
beyond good or bad -- they just don't care, they don't even
see good or bad. As you pointed out, Jim, it's so frigging
obvious how much Marlowe cares about ethics and morality and
obsesses so much over the difficult choices he has to make
that I too am thunderstruck.
An amoral person isn't someone who just occasionally commits
an immoral (or even just an illegal) act. That would be like
saying someone who drinks a beer is an alcoholic.
Even I can see that. And I'm a heathen.
Oh, and Kerry wrote (regarding my post on violence):
>Of course, writers may not do it well, but I think
we'd be wrong to assume
>that the depiction of extreme violence automatically
means the writer is
>untalented. The question is, do such depictions have
intrinsic value, and I
>suspect the answer might, even after weighing the
reasonable nays, be yes.
Which is why I said (note my emphasis in CAPS)
>There's nothing particular literary or
ground-breaking about GRATUITOUS
>offensiveness. It's USUALLY the sign of a weak
writer, not a strong one.
>I'd rather a writer try to mess with my head, not my
gag reflex.
Granted, one man's ceiling is another man's floor, and
obviously, violence or sex or anything else that pushes
buttons can and is often used well by many writers to
challenge, to push, to provoke -- and maybe even to make us
think.
But for every writer who uses it well, there are a thousand
hacks and pretentious gits out there who miss the point
entirely. They're the ones who push buttons and run away --
or even worse, they stand there with nothing to say when you
answer the door.
--
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