--- William Denton <
buff@pobox.com> wrote:
> On the other hand, I do like epics: huge,
involved
> stories with lots of
> people, spanning years or decades, where you
really
> get to know people,
> and you don't just see them in a moment of
crisis,
> you get to see their
> whole lives.
>
> Are there any hardboiled epics? I don't
mean
> series, where each novel is
> pretty much a self-contained unit, usually with
a
> hero who gets mixed up
> in a crime and solves it and then goes home. I
mean
> something like
> Ellroy's LA Quartet, which is the only example
that
> comes to mind. I
> don't know if he intended it to be four parts
when
> he started, but it
> hangs together as one big work (albeit one that
gets
> freakier as it goes
> along) and by the end it's like you've known
Pete
> Bondurant all your life.
> Same for his next books, AMERICAN TABLOID and
THE
> COLD SIX THOUSAND, and
> the next one which I think is supposed to wrap
up
> his history.
I think in general the virtues of hardboiled fiction
--rawness, tightness, immediacy -- work against epic
structures.
On what others have said, Pelecanos seems to obviously fit. I
haven't read Sallis or Peace. I wouldn't include Derek
Raymond or Jack O'Connell, both of whom I like immensely but
are too "anti-realistic" to properly fit into an "epic"
class. (You might stretch a point and squeeze in O'Connell,
but if it's an epic, it's a very postmodern, intellectualized
kind of epic.)
I don't like it particularly, but I'd probably throw in Max
Allan Collins's TRUE DETECTIVE. Another obvious choice is
Stuart Woods's CHIEFS.
Related to epics, though not *quite* the same thing, are big
John O'Haraesque novels that deal in depth with crime. They
provide some of the same pleasures, I think. I'd toss in the
more ambitious John D MacDonald attempts (A FLASH OF GREEN,
THE LAST ONE LEFT) and Roderick Thorp's THE DETECTIVE.
doug
===== Doug Bassett
dj_bassett@yahoo.com
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