I've been reading Stephen Hunter's collected nonfiction,
VIOLENT SCREEN. Most of the pieces are reviews of
neo-noir/hardboiled/violent movies that Hunter wrote for the
WASHINGTON POST (PULP FICTION, ONE FALSE MOVE, RESERVOIR
DOGS, BLOOD SIMPLE, etc.). While the pieces relate directly
to film, the broader topics Hunter discusses certainly would
be of interest to this group. Here is his take on the
original pulp hard-boiled writers: "The writers were hacks
and could grind out three or four per year, year after year
after year, fueled by loneliness, self-loathing and lots of
black coffee. They seem to have been men with squalid
backgrounds, usually washed out of the newspaper trade and,
having failed at screenwriting and PR, almost all with
drinking problems and personal lives like unwatched soap
operas...The books were their last stop on the road to hell
-- " Pretty good, huh?
Because I don't read the POST, these short pieces are
delighting the hell out of me. (I'd read Hunter's DIRTY WHITE
BOYS and liked it a lot -- having grown up among the same
sort of Oklahoma trailer trash who populate that novel -- but
I never could get into any of his other novels.) Has anyone
else read VIOLENT SCREEN? What's your opinion?
Also, in one of the pieces, Hunter mentions a 1972 essay
written by Paul Schrader in which he breaks down noir into
three phases, the last being the
"manic" phase. Unfortunately, Hunter doesn't mention where
Schrader's essay was published. Does anyone know? Has it been
collected in book form?
Later....Kip
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