Re: RARA-AVIS: Recent reads UK and US and other

From: Scatalogic@aol.com
Date: 25 May 2001


I had a real problem with Arnott's the Long Firm, I actually quite enjoyed reading it but found the characters were cardboard cutout types taken straight from The Big Book of Swinging London rather than real people and eventually their predictability got right on my wick! His new novel is now out and is also set in the 60's, again it has been extravagantly praised and I will attempt to approach it with an open mind. UK Rara's should look out for the next issue of Crime Time which is on Britain Vs American crime fiction and should be interesting. Wasn't Chandler the unfortunate recipient of an English Public School education? (translates as private school), perhaps that helped shape his writing and the "outsider" perspective? I wonder if it's a problem of locale, or the distance from the locale? I find it hard to read about places I know well and generally find the London depicted in English noir/hb unconvincing. Whereas everything I know about LA has come from films and (mainly fiction) reading yet I have no trouble finding Elroy, Chandler or Bunker credible. Anyway enough of my yacking lets boogie Regards Colin

--
# To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
# majordomo@icomm.ca.  This will not work for the digest version.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 25 May 2001 EDT