>
> Jerome Charyn: MARILYN THE WILD - Don't know to what
extent this is a
> procedural. It certainly features cops, but it never
grabbed my
attention.
> Couldn't finish it.
>
I've had a similar experience to Al re: trying to read
Charyn. I know that this guy is held in high regard by at
least some (particularly in France, I believe) but I found it
very hard to get past the very beginning of whichever one I
tried to read. I'll give him a try another time, maybe,
although his books have slipped way down Mt To-Be-Read. It
hasn't helped any viewing a made for TV movie based on one of
his books that made me squirm all the way through. I know, TV
adaptation - but this was produced & written, IIRC, by
Charyn. The lead character, Isaac
(?) was an insufferable boor of a Jewish New Yorker
ubermensch Police Commissioner who apparently single-handedly
takes care of most of New York's major policing problems,
especially those involving shoot-outs. I've heard talk of
this guy being something of a "magical realist" but if the
telemovie is evidence, it's more that he either ignores
reality or ain't very good at approximating it. The telemovie
at least (& I have to think it's a reasonably accurate
translation of the book)was, IMO, preposterous. As a police
procedural, from memory (it was on tele about 1 year ago),
the procedures go generally like this. NY's finest are at a
siege. They are bamboozled. Along comes Isaac. Isaac solves
the problem. Mortals gaze in awe, cops grumble
unappreciatively, though some shoot sneaking glances of
admiration. Isaac does a sound bite for the media then has
dinner with his glamorous girlfriend. That's as close to
procedure as I recall. Of course, that's not a bad thing in
itself, necessarily but you expect a novel about "cops" (I
understand the Commish had started as a cop & worked his
way up) to have some semblance, some nod to, the real world.
Then again, maybe I've got it wrong. Maybe in New York that's
how policing is done. It doesn't seem likely, though. Maybe
I'll give Charyn another try when this telemovie has faded
from my memory (after all, my copies of his work are in the
Zomba Black Box Thriller anthology, so Maxim Jakubowsky has
placed him in company with Jim Thompson, David Goodis, Horace
McCoy, W R Burnett & Cornell Woolrich. Also, Allison
& Busby reprinted some of his books in the same "serie
noire" that reprinted the Richard Stark, Chester Himes &
Ross Macdonald books). It'll be quite a while, though.
Rene
-- # 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 : 01 Oct 2002 EDT