At 11:50 PM 08/01/2005 -0500, you wrote:
>Not that it counters your point, but Vegas has
switched back, replacing
>the family friendly image with its current slogan,
"What happens in
>Vegas stays in Vegas." It seems not enough of the
families' money was
>staying in Vegas -- guess they were taking advantage
of all of the loss
>leaders without hitting the tables to pay it all, and
more, back.
Right, didn't think of that. Maybe there is a God?
>For the record, it'd be just over 10 years for most
of the US.
Interesting, though TV's impact was swift. And the immediate
impact being more on movies than books is right, I think.
Book publishers have tried a lot of things to counter the
impact of TV. So again I overstate, but I still think that
the mass market for short fiction, and novels has gone
largely to television and movies respectively. Not to say
that nobody's reading, but the numbers do not compare.
The fact that Macdonald makes a popular breakthrough
mid-sixties suggests that TV did not impact his sales, but
does the fact that his breakthrough came as a result of the
release of Harper suggest a change in the order of things, do
you think?
>As for TV wiping out regional dialects, you've
clearly never travelled
>through the American South, or between boroughs in
NY, for that matter.
Yes, yes. Dialect seems to be more of a cultural indicator
now, and sometimes as a matter of conscious choice. Add to
that the fact that Canada, and I'm sure the US too, are
increasingly more culturally diverse. But I don't think it is
as much a class indicator as it was pre-TV, and that's more
of what we mean by "colloquial" isn't it?
>We hear that a lot, from him as much as anyone else,
about Ellroy using
>jazz speak. But does he? Did anyone ever really speak
that way?
I'd agree that the answer is likely "no," but that's my point
about the impact of TV. Is there a current, tough-guy
colloquial style that doesn't rely heavily on constructed
styles related to cultural choices, such as, say, rap? Or is
it that I (meaning me, personally) only encounter this style
in that form? With cheap (relatively speaking) technology in
the hands of more skilled practitioners, pop culture and
commercial communication are so closely related that it seems
to me it would be hard to tell where one leaves off and the
other picks up.
But Macdonald wasn't that good at the colloquial side of
tough, my opinion. I'm just wondering how important that is
to the definition of hardboiled by this time. It's been a few
months since we last opened the definitions box.
Best Kerry
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