on 12/4/03 5:17 PM, Larson, Craig at
Craig.Larson@trinidadstate.edu wrote:
<<>>
> Yet I keep on reading
> Burke and await each new book eagerly.
<<>>
Yeah, well, I can understand liking a book/author for the
overall experience, and enjoying visiting the world created,
even if, or perhaps, because, it's familiar, yet interesting
and evocative. I read a couple of Burke's; liked them; then
said: "Okay, been there, done that." When I read a new book
by someone I've read before and think, half way through,
maybe I've read it before, that's when I realize I've grown
tired of their schtick.
Part of it is marketing, in that publishers want series
characters that
'lock in' a certain fan base; and many readers enjoy the
familiarity of the series. I enjoyed Stout's Nero Wolfe,
knowing that what I was going to read was sure to be familiar
in many details. I never took the stories
'seriously', that is, I read them as clever diversions, not
in any way a seriously intriguing literary experience, which
is where I might put Burke, for ex. Same with most of
Christie. Cute, but not any meat to them. Souffle, rather
than stew.
In Burke one starts to see the familiar elements: wife
trouble; family endangered by 'mad' criminal; rather long
introspections by the detective that have more to do with his
internal world than any practical attempts to solve a crime;
the spiraling pacing of the plot that imparts a sense of
action even when nothing much is actually happening. (I also
confess to finding Burke a bit confusing and hard to follow,
which, in a mystery story, seems to me to be a bit of a
drawback. Sometimes I feel worn out trying to figure out just
what the hell's going on.)
Of course, if you're writing a successful series, you've got
to be some kind of idiot to stop doing it just because you're
repeating yourself. The bottom line is that it's the readers
that keep it going. The moment they desert the characters,
it's all over now, Baby Blue.
Miles
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