"My original plan to pace the first half of the movie slow,
and the second
half fast, had been a good idea."
The movie ends with a chase and a huge crash; the book ends
with violence,
arson, and arrest. The book is set up as the character's
larger movie,
"Written, produced, and directed by Richard Hudson." He's
also the star.
The problem with the book, with what seems to be Willeford's
favorite
approach, is implied in the movie's plot formulation: pacing
slow and then
fast. In the movie-within-the-(book)movie, the problem is
that filming
scenes out of sequence, necessary to maintain budget, tends
to make the
director-character lose the pacing. In The Woman Chaser,
Burnt Orange
Heresy, and even some of the Hoke Moseleys, the plot ambles
along at first,
depending very much on the reader's interest in the main
character. (Miami
Blues starts better, in this respect.) I find Hoke's personal
life, the
routine police procedures, his "family" interesting, but the
first person
characters in Woman Chaser and the art critic in BOH are both
egomaniacs
whose attentiveness to themselves wearies the reader and
slows any pacing
in the first part of those novels. The explosions of action,
last 40 pages
of Woman Chaser, while quite striking and mean-spirited,
highlight how
undramatic the first parts are.
I'll keep reading Willeford, when I can find him, but with a
keen awareness
of some shortcomings. Almost seems like he starts with a
striking action
sequence in mind (like the Coens did for Blood Simple),
something that
could come straight out of Thompson (to whom the cover blurbs
compare
him)--which comparison reminds one how superior Thompson is
in maintaining
tension throughout.
Bill Hagen
<billha@ionet.net>
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