Regarding hard boiled fiction drawn from fact:
>From: Kevin Smith <kvnsmith@colba.net>
>
>Speaking of theft, coincidentally, there's a woman
who's contacted me (I'm
>not sure why-I guess because of my site) who claims to
be suing Dick
>Francis over what she claims is the theft of her life
story in his Sid
>Halley novel, COME TO GRIEF, of a few years
ago.
>
What I find interesting is crime novels that anticipate
events. I'm sure
there are plenty examples of this because there are only so
many twists on
crime.
One example (not hard boiled) is LeCarre's Tinker, Tailor,
Soldier, Spy
which anticipated the revelation of the fourth man in the Kim
Philby spy ring.
I've had people ask how I knew about a certain crime or
criminal that I
had, in fact, never heard of. I simply understood enough
about how someone
might do something to describe a crime which had actually
taken place
without knowing about it.
I think it would be interesting to relate hard boiled novels
to actual
cases which might have inspired them as well as novels that
may have
anticipated crimes.
Regarding negative reviews: (Sorry for the snips, but it's a
long post.
>From: Mari Hall
<found.dead.in.texas@airmail.net>
>Subject: Re: RARA-AVIS: Negative comments (was;
Steals)
>
>> > to warn via the subject line that a negative
review is enclosed.
>> >
>
>> Since I just posted some comments very critical
of a
>> contemporary book, this struck home. I don't know
whether Fred
>
>However, although it is no fun to see your book
trashed, I think anyone
>who reads owes it to the rest of us to post what they
"think".
No problem with this. My point being that in print it's
generally easy to
have an agent or friend screen reviews. It's much harder to
do that in a
mailing list.
I don't have a clear answer, but I wanted to raise the
question and see if
there was any consensus. It may just be that a list which
comments on books
is never going to be an entirely safe place for writers. So
it goes. I'm
sure we'll all survive.
>From: M-T <matrxtech@sprintmail.com>
>
>A few weeks ago, I heard about a recent lawsuit by
Faye Kellerman,
>alleging that Tom Stoppard and another screenwriter
stole a story from
>one of her novels. Does anyone know about the merits
of her case?
>
No idea on the merits of the case, but I heard it was a novel
that had
similarities to "Shakespeare in Love."
I think one of the reasons I reacted so strongly to the word
"theft" is
that plagiarism _is_ theft, but not all use of common themes
is plagiarism.
>Regarding stealing, Bach was another notorious lifter.
Greatness is not
>always the same as originality.
>
Right. From my point of view, modernism has some wildly
romantic views of
"original artists / original ideas." It's an irony that the
same modernist
sensibility that supported literary minimalism and other
basic foundations
of hard boiled literature also gave birth to this genre with
its cynical
view of things ever being different.
>Regarding Woolley's blow-by-blow analysis of Teran's
first eight
>paragraphs, I wonder how, say, Faulkner or Cormac
McCarthy would survive
>such a scrutiny. I know, I'm just wanting to make
trouble. Spring is
>finally here, I think
>
I think that's the general problem of line editing / close
reading. The
more refined your judgement becomes, the more almost
everything you read
seems to have problems. It can drive you crazy.
I'm going to unsubscribe for the time being while I work on
more fiction
people can feel free to write negative reviews about. In the
meantime, I
can be reached by email.
Fred
----
Down on Ponce a novel by Fred Willard
http://personal.atl.bellsouth.net/~fwillard
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