>
> Can we have a definition of "love"?
>
I can't define love, without resorting to a dictionary, just
give a few examples: It's how Mike Hammer feels about his
gat; how Travis McGee feels about his boat. It's also the
bait that's used to hook suckers and pull them into the dark
vortex that is the plot of the average noir novel or movie.
The lack of love is what slowly killed Cornell Woolrich while
he wrote his purple pulp masterpieces (and some not-so
masterpieces). It's what does for the protagonists of David
Goodis novels. In this particular instance, it's the feeling
one noir-head has for another noir head who has practiced
random acts of kindness such as mailing out an old Peter Rabe
paperback just coz he knew the receiver would appreciate it*.
Even if one (or both) noir-heads work in a job that many
people don't approve of , such as military technology or
market research and is silly enough to crack a (barbed) joke
about it. That's what love means to me.
(I've also heard that love is a warm puppy but that assertion
just makes me reach for my Magnum .44.
I'm told it's how God/Allah/Buddha feels about even the
least of his/her creations but who am I to speak for the
Supreme Being?)
* Not that miker is the only Kool Kat to practice such
kindness. Others such as Jim Stephenson, who sent me a
home-made CD of some of the coolest music around and "Texas"
Bill Crider who e-mailed me one of his seminal articles about
"paperback originals" from Gold Medal and Dell
(now re-christened "noir novels"). Like the song says, "love
is in the air". Love,
Rene
-- # Plain ASCII text only, please. Anything else won't show up. # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 26 Feb 2004 EST