--- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "davezeltserman" <Dave.Zeltserman@...> wrote:
>
> David, I think you make an excellent point about the false impression created when taking a writer's work out of context. I greatly admire Derek Raymond's writing, and his factory series books are one of my favorite hardboiled/noirish series, but it took some investment on my part to fully immerse myself and appreciate his writing. If I had just seen in a review passages of his writing taken out of context my eyes probably would've glazed over and I most likely never would've tried any of his books and lost out on reading some of my favorite crime novels.
>
> --Dave
>
Well quite. The willingness of people here to judge one of the very few genuinely important (if, on occasion, over-ambitious) contemporary crime writers on the basis of a few brief snippets chosen by the critic to make particular points is profoundly depressing. Anyway, unless I too have misunderstood Joy's initial post, her point was not that the review dissuaded her from reading Peace, but that, if she had not already read Peace, then the review would have put her off. Which is a very different statement. It's an interesting review but off-putting indeed and lacking a certain understanding of just what the political situation in Britain in the late 1970s and early 1980s was like. Also to suggest that the Red Riding Quartet lacks grief is frankly nuts. The books are saturated in grief.
John
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