Re: RARA-AVIS: Big hardboiled epics

From: Doug Bassett ( dj_bassett@yahoo.com)
Date: 28 Sep 2004


--- DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net wrote:

> Doug wrote:
>
> "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."
>
> It's been a long time since my intro to lit classes
> (and I didn't pay
> that much attention when I was taking them), but why
> are
> "anti-realistic" and "epic" mutually exclusive?
> (I'm not being snarky,
> I'm actually interested in this idea.)

I'm thinking of "epic" in the sense of a big roiling long story that's "realistic" in a mainstream novel welcoming-to-the-reader kind of way. Ambitious big fat novels, the kind they used to make into mini-series, back when TV made mini-series. SHOGUN, CENTENNIAL, that kind of stuff. (I'm currently on an Irwin Shaw kick, and THE YOUNG LIONS would certainly fit.)

Both O'Connell and Raymond are too intellectualized, too formally skewed IMO for those kind of primal pleasures. Like I said, you might stretch a point and squeeze O'Connell in -- he bears a similar relationship to this sort of thing, though, that David Lynch bore to traditional TV cop dramas with TWIN PEAKS.

THE GODFATHER would definitely fit, though I don't really consider it hardboiled, just a big fat novel about crime. Still, you could say that about THE DETECTIVE, too.

doug

===== Doug Bassett dj_bassett@yahoo.com

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