The hard boiled detective narrator of this classic, Kraven
(who is the opposite of cowardly), is so hard to take,
especially but not only because of his way of dealing with
Black people, that I wonder about Latimer's point of view:
was he using Kravin to comment on the moral and emotional
compromises one had to make to be successful in this field?
The ending aseems to suggest this, as does Kraven's asides
("the poor kid," etc). I read the 1982 re-issue, which was
supposed to be complete. But any time a sex scene is about to
get to the point where it could have gone further in a
pornographic vein (and give prurient readers something really
explicit), the scene ends. This was very common practice in
soft core erotica from the 20s through the 60s. You just had
to pay more for the real hot version. I wonder if somewhere,
there is an underground version of _Solomon's Vineyard_ (as
was the case with erotica published over the coutner or sent
through the mail).
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