RARA-AVIS: Gil Brewer

From: Al Guthrie ( allanguthrie@ukonline.co.uk)
Date: 16 Aug 2002


----- Original Message ----- From: "Mario Taboada" < matrxtech@yahoo.com

> Some of Brewer's work is less than fabulous.

Is there a single GM author this accusation doesn't apply to? Brewer wrote novels ridiculously quickly and what's in print is all first draft. I find the quality of his output extraordinary under the circumstances. I'd love to see what some modern practioners might produce in five days.

>He
> could get campy, feverish, even drippy, and some of his
> plots are even more ridiculous than Thompson's worst ones
> (e.g. The Golden Gizmo).

Ok. He got drunk a lot.

>In any case, he's definitely noir.

Bastard son of James M Cain. In fact Gil Fitzcain would have been a nice pseudonym.

> The title Backwoods Teaser sounds pretty racy. Actually,
> Brewer wrote great sex scenes. He knew how to create sexual
> tension. I don't know of any goldmedalist that surpasses
> him in this area. Which goes to show that every Gold Medal
> has something of value.

Not only does he portray women and, therefore, sexual tension better than any other GM author of my acquaintance, but I don't think he lags far behind, er, James Cain. And Brewer at his best is as good as Cain. His forte is short, enduring character descriptions. I don't have the direct quotes, but a couple I remember are (roughly): He looked as if he were strapped from head to foot in leather - when he moved his neck, his whole body moved. And another: He looked as if somebody had machine-gunned his soul.

Al

--
# 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 : 16 Aug 2002 EDT