I read my rara-avis mail once a week (just got through over
150 birds and
don't really see the need for half of 'em). Provides a
certain perspective,
in that I don't feel any sort of knee-jerk need to respond to
something--or
everything--mailed in fifteen minutes before.
It happens to be a matter of some amusement to me that the
majority of my
posts sink without a ripple. I'm always sure that what I've
just said is
brilliant, not to mention relevant. Imagine my consternation
when no one else
thinks so. Why, I waste hours composing screeds about my
victimhood. But,
gosh darn it, I just can't hold it against anyone here when
I'm having such
fun just being at the party. Which is the point.
We come with a shared interest, but a host of attitudes.
Damned if I don't
like the books _more_ because of the perspectives aired
here--many of which
run counter to my own inclinations. Hellfire, I think Ellroy
is an illiterate
punk with no style and still _White Jazz_ is on my reading
pile because of
some people here. Disagreement on R-A ain't personal, and
neither is being
ignored. So don't take it that way. This list, devoted to
violence, is the
most civil, and least judgemental, part of cybersapce I've
yet been to
(probably something to do with the fact that you have to
assume everyone is
packin').
And now back to crime:
I'm hanging in Boston at the moment, far from my usual
Atlanta haunts (nice to
see Fred Willard back!) and thought I'd read a little local
color. Which in
this case means Jeremiah Healy's _Invasion of Privacy_ and
Jerome Doolittle's
_Kill Story_. Doolittle first [evil publisher takes over
local paper in
Cambridge and fires old staff. Protagonist, Tom Bethany, is
asked by sweet,
little old lady to drive evil publisher out of town.]: I
enjoyed the read,
quite amusing really and informative on the business of small
local papers,
but harboiled it isn't. Every "good" character is too good
and too equally
willing to join in the plot to bring down the (clearly
defined) "bad"
characters to sustain any kind of tension. Bethany might make
a hardboiled
character if he were in more dangerous waters than Cambridge,
but there aren't
any other "tough" characters in the book. Of course Bethany
has the "courage"
he needs because no one can threaten him and he knows no one
can threaten him.
Now Healy [woman hires John Cuddy to do background check on
fiancee who has no
background]: Cuddy is all cuddly with an assistant DA and
still talks to his
wife, dead these seven years. Still, the man is stone
hard-boiled. This is a
character who has stared death in the face in many of its
guises, he knows the
world is cold and heartless, and he makes his own reasons for
going on--chief
among which is love.
But love can be, in fact must be, the catalyst for horror.
How can you know
what goes on inside that person across from you? Who are
they? The unknown
has always led to terror. In this work of Healy's, love must
be tested, like
courage and honor in Chandler's books, tested again and again
to make sure it
is actually there. What happens when the test is made and
love is lost? What
happens when the test is not made? What happens when the test
itself violates
love?
Cuddy's client, Olga Evorovna, Boston banker, confronts the
fact that she
doesn't know her lover, the mysterious Mr. Dees, at all. Can
she go on loving
him? But that is just the love story that draws us into the
book. Cuddy's
own story contains a brief (all too brief, imo) confrontation
with cancer that
almost shakes Cuddy's DA girlfriend out of her relationship
with him. Many of
the other characters too have their love stories, with their
challenges.
I totally dug this book and the way it brought up issues of
trust and faith
and suffering--and then didn't answer the questions it asked.
Which prompts
me to ask if people could recommend hard-boiled love stories.
Not stories
where "love ain't nothing but sex misspelled", but stories
like _The Long
Goodbye_ and _Invasion of Privacy_.
Finally, I'd like to shout out to all the new members who've
joined this
summer, particularly one David Harvey, who joined this bunch
of miscreants and
felons with what was almost an apology for the caliber of his
roscoe:
> As for my critical sensibilities, I hate to have to
say it, but I find
> deconstructionism/post-structuralism along with a
healthy dose of Marxist
> theory to be quite useful in teasing out information
from the text.
No shame in this, my friend, no matter what the running dogs
on this list
might
want you to believe (though what do you mean by adding that
superfluous, and
ideological, "ism" to deconstruction? ;-j ). Go nuts, I got
your back.
In fact, I got all y'all's back. But try to shoot straight
anyway.
Cheers,
Marshall
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