Hi Doug,
I have the same frustration and the
same uneasy feeling. There seems to be a lot of books out
there that need a tough editor, and since it seems doubtful
that writers are running amok ignoring the wishes of their
publishers, long must be what publishers think they need to
sell their expensive books.
My conviction about most hard boiled
writing in this era is that it cannot stand the weight of
multiple subplots and peripheral characters. The work must be
lean and clean and largely linear. All of that points toward
short, at least in words. You can blow up the print size and
fatten the pages and the margins, but if you try to write
books like Ellroy's, you'd better have a following, and you
better be as gifted as he is. The worst of the current trend
is that there are even reasonably short books in the stores
that could stand some cutting, short stories masquerading as
novels, someone on this list said recently. What I suspect is
going to happen is that the books that sell in the years to
come will be tighter and shorter, and that editing will come
back into fashion. From my Mac to God's ears.
Jim
Blue
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