--- Dick Lochte <
dlochte@adelphia.net> wrote:
>
> >Doug Bassett wrote:
>
> >Books can be good or bad, but relatively few
books
> lose this kind of impact
> because society marches on, I think. Less
>>than
> most people think,
> anyway.
>
> I'd like to think this is true, because society
and
> science and technology
> are marching on at a pretty fast pace. I
recently
> read an S.J. Rozan short
> story that couldn't have been more than four or
five
> years old that dealt
> with the illegal sale of some powder --tiger
tooth,
> I think -- that had an
> aphrodisiac affect. It was completely undercut
by
> the arrival of Viagra. But
> it was still a nicely written piece.
Of course anyone who reads beyond the bestseller of the
moment has to be able to handle historical shifts, but that's
usually not a big deal. I don't think most people have
problems accommodating phone booths instead of cell phones,
say. Or funk music instead of rap.
I think my idea has to do more with situations where the plot
hinges on a revelation *and* the revelation is central to the
effect of the piece. If that revelation is dated, then the
effect is less. HALO IN BRASS is a good book, but it must've
been more impressive when it first came out, more shocking.
It has undeniably lost some of its power (the edition I have
has a intro. by Evans himself, which more or less fesses up
to this). The COLUMBO episode I talked about earlier was like
that, too -- it seems charmingly dated now, a curio.
By this logic this should happen more in short fiction than
novels (where "revelations" are usually more important), and
TV more than movies (same reasoning).
A novel like KISS ME DEADLY is interesting because it seems
to go against this. The plot hinges on a revelation and the
revelation is central to the piece
-- "Juno was a man". I think the reason it works, at least
for me, is that Spillane's world is nothing even close to the
"real" world, it's a pretty strange alternate universe. As
such, the revelation has a peculiar impact all it's own -- a
confirmation of Spillane's worst nightmares?
Just some morning thoughts.
doug
===== Doug Bassett
dj_bassett@yahoo.com
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