The brilliance of Small Crimes rests, in large part, on the fact that
Zeltserman turned Thompson's Killer Inside Me inside out. With Lou
Ford you got a bad man on the inside and a good guy on the outside who
fools all those around him. With Joe Denton you get a bad guy on the
outside who spends his time and energy trying to fool himself in his
own mind even when he can't fool anyone else. And let me say, while
I'm on the subject, that I think Zeltserman made excellent use of
first-person narration, which I think is generally overused.
On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 2:11 PM, Ron Clinton <clinton65@comcast.net> wrote:
> If that were a valid, comprehensive definition of noir, it seems to me that
> that would discount a number of works associated with the genre. THE KILLER
> INSIDE ME by Thompson leaps immediately to mind (and, yes, SMALL CRIMES as
> well). I suppose each of the works' protagonists have an element of
> self-delusion wherein *they* might believe they're trying to do the right
> thing...but the truth known to the reader is quite different.
>
> Ron C.
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com [mailto:rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com] On
>> Behalf Of DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net
>> Sent: Friday, January 09, 2009 9:19 AM
>> To: rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com
>> Subject: Re: RARA-AVIS: The Noir of which we speak ... SMALL CRIMES,
>>
>> Jack wrote:
>>
>> "The one difference from most noir is that in this book, at least to me,
>> we see man who tries to do the right thing from the beginning--but he is
>> still screwed."
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 09 Jan 2009 EST