From: Jim Blue <
WordRunner@aol.com>
> My quibble with Pelacanos is not that he includes
detail, but that he
> includes detail for its own sake, long after it has
stopped revealing the
> personalities and motives of his characters, and
long after it has been
> necessary for an understanding of the story. Maybe
he does it because he
> loves writing it, but he certainly doesn't do it
because the reader or the
> story need it. It seems self indulgent to me, and as
with so many of his
> characters, all style.
> I find that I keep wanting to say to him, "Okay, I
got it. I
understand
> who these people are, how they are hooked up to each
other, and what is
going
> on. I don't need five more examples of it and
another 10 pages that don't
> move the story an inch."
I always saw Pellecanos as slyly intruding the postmodern on
the neo-realistic world of Hammett and Hemingway. Song
titles, soft drink brands, a street sign, stupid little
events in a life . . . all cultural artifacts and symbols
that make up reality in the postmodern world. From that
perspective, it's not characterization Pellecanos is doing.
He doesn't include this stuff as "plot points," where
everything introduced in detail must have significance later
on in the story. Instead, he's describing a world where
concrete reality doesn't exist, just regurgitated symbols
endlessly reprocessed appearing again and again in
refrain.
While I can respect Hammett's achievement and even understand
him in the context of his time period, I wouldn't give him to
today's reader as an introduction to hardboiled/noir. I
mentioned Lawrence Block before as a possibility. Upon
reflection, Pellecanos would be better.
Greg Swan
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