-- JIM DOHERTY wrote:
>
> Oddly, because the books happen to be excellent cop novels, they have actually survived the deservedly discredited political system for which they were apologias.
>
Gosh, that's pretty sweeping--if you are referring to marxism--just because different forms of Communism in several different countries has been discarded to a greater or lesser extent. I would rather say that particular regimes have been discredited, but Marxism as a philosophy is still alive.
And I'm not sure if Sjowall & Wahloo would have identified themselves as Marxists--they were certainly Leftists, though.
They believed, as a teacher of mine, Dorothy Thompson, the British historian, said --"Money explains a lot, but not everything."
As I recall, the title of the series, The Story of a Crime, was to refer to the crime against ordinary people that they saw powerful institutions of all sorts--government as well as business, class,& religion-- committing every day.
After all, Sweden was a very Socialist state in the time when they were writing--and the authors were just as scathing about socialism as any other institution.
In particular, I'm thinking of Martin Beck visiting his mother in the very pleasant home for the aged where she lived--the loneliness and depression and disconnectedness of her life was a problem of great magnitude--they saw the breakdown of families as problematic--but they also wrote about the stultification and deprivation of rural life,
Zoetoo.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 21 Apr 2009 EDT