RARA-AVIS: bleak and broken cities

Myshmysh@aol.com
Wed, 8 Oct 1997 14:13:08 -0400 (EDT) In a message dated 97-10-07 10:15:27 EDT, kvnsmith@total.net writes:

<< it's a wonder that Chandler, Macdonald, et al. could make sunny
California so bleak. >>

Decloaking to riposte with the rather obvoius:

It is clear, then, that you don't live there. ;-j

Neither do I, for that matter, and Cali has never seemed bleak to me on my
occasional sojourns to that state. However, Atlanta, where I currently
reside, is a nasty little town (I am encouraged by the recent citations of
books set here; I am in pursuit . . .).

The finest HB fiction uses locale as another character (hellfire, the finest
fiction does). Corruption exists wherever human desire does. But serious
rot only sets in when either all desires are fulfilled or all desires will be
forever unfulfilled. And there's always some jackal there to sell you hope
whether you have everything or nothing. That's the city I want to visit when
I crack the covers of a hardboiled book. But I have to believe in that city.

California, and LA in particular, has served America extremely well as a
locus of desire, even going so far as to manufacture and export it
(non-fiction reccomendation: _City_of_Quartz_ by Mike Davis; a "history" of
LA). I believe in the corruption Chandler, et al excavate because I
"know"--and desire--California. I am likely to be much more sceptical if the
novelist takes me to Bangor, Maine (recommendations welcome).

Sure, I'll believe in human passions no matter where the story is set, but I
don't in general read mysteries. A corpse is just a dead stiff and I don't
much care how it got that way. Give me a character searching for himself in
a society on the edge of collapse and I'll follow you to hell--and be
disappointed if we don't get there.

--myshmysh

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