A great -- albeit rather sad -- interview with him:
http://www.twbooks.co.uk/crimescene/thornburginterview.htm
Ron C.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com [mailto:rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com] On
> Behalf Of John Williams
> Sent: Friday, January 22, 2010 10:07 AM
> To: rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: RARA-AVIS: Newton Thornburg
>
> sonny wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > i was disappointed with 'eve's men' by thornburg, tho the man can
> > write, no doubt about it and it's not without interest. but following
> > 'cutter and bone' it was a let down for me. perhaps every other book
> > by him will feel the same, which would be ashame. i will still be
> > reading more of him.
> >
> The more recent Thornburgs are weaker than his early stuff. If you liked
> Cutter and Bone try Dreamland and To Die In California, not quite as
> good, but not too far off either. Meanwhile the success of The Road is
> making me consider re-reading Thornburg's end of civilization novel,
> Valhalla. I dimly recall that it was critiqued as neo-fascist at the
> time, though I even more dimly remember disagreeing.
>
> John
>
> Oh, while I'm at it I've just dug out the entry on Thornburg I wrote for
> St James Encyclopedia, donkey's years ago.
>
> _NEWTON THORNBURG_
>
>
>
> Newton Thornburg is pretty much the definitive crime writer as outsider.
> Nine books in twenty-odd years obsessively work and rework the same
> themes. These are stories of loners with harsh, short names - Hook,
> Stone, Cutter, Bone, Crow, Cross - who have had their lives tipped out
> of their control, generally by fate, the government or both.
>
>
>
> Thornburg's first novel _Gentleman Born_ marked out one of his major
> themes, the family tragedy. Brandon Kendall is the last remnant of an
> old money Midwestern family, his father killed himself, his cousins died
> in a boating accident when they were children together, and golden boy
> Brandon is intent on going to the bad just as fast and as far as he can.
> Gambling and women are his chosen route to oblivion and along the way he
> entangles himself in small town corruption. When the end comes it is
> bleak and bloody and no surprise
>
>
>
> A relatively conventional caper novel, _The Knockover_, followed and
> Thornburg's subsequent literary career has tended to oscillate between
> these two poles. Family gone bad sagas like _Black Angus_ or _Beautiful
> Kate_ have alternated with seemingly more conventional crime novels like
> _Cutter And Bone_ (his greatest success, filmed as Cutter's Way),
> _Dreamland_, or his most recent work, _The Lion At The Door_.
>
>
>
> However the contrast is superficial: all these books are driven by the
> same question of how one comes to terms with unbearable loss. Cutter in
> _Cutter And Bone_ was crippled in Vietnam, Greg Kendall in _Beautiful
> Kate_ tries to come to terms with his sister's death following their
> incestuous relationship, Blanchard in _Black Angus_ is losing his dream,
> his farm in the Ozarks, Kohl in _The Lion At The Door_ has lost both
> farm and family. This theme of loss takes flight as an echo of the
> American mood post-Vietnam; a sense that the whole country is losing
> control, losing sight of its dream.
>
>
>
> In his strangest novel, _Valhalla_, this connection is made all too
> explicit. It's an apocalyptic novel of a near future in which America is
> gripped by race war, and in it Thornburg's terminal pessimism as to the
> state of America leads him into territory uncomfortably close to that
> inhabited by the survivalist ultra-right..
>
>
>
> Thornburg's pessimism is far more effective in his crime-based novels
> like _Cutter And Bone_ and _Dreamland_ whose pace prevents melancholic
> wallowing and whose cynicism is all too appropriate to the task of
> exposing the corporate roots of American crime. In these two novels
> particularly, Thornburg stands as a defiantly individual voice within
> the crime canon, bleak and true.
>
> * *
>
>
>
> >
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
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