Juri,
Re your response to my earlier post below:
> I seem to have touched a nerve here, but that
wasn't
> my intention. Being a
> leftist is not a pejorative term for me and I
wasn't
> saying that the writers
> themselves are necessarily leftists. I was
merely
> saying that some forms of
> a police procedural novel are in many ways
opposed
> to heroic individualism
> of the hardboiled genre and I find that
extremely
> interesting.
It's not a question of whether or not being "leftist" is
pejorative. There are some procedural writers who ARE
leftist. I mentioned the Sjowall/Wahloo books in my earlier
post. Not only are the Beck novels leftist in orientation,
they are among the best cop novels ever written.
However, in their political orientation, they are not
representative of the police procedural sub-genre as a whole.
They used the form, a piece of fiction that presents law
enforcement with realism (or at least the appearance of
realism), to subliminally argue for a particular political
viewpoint, but that viewpoint is not the prevalent one in the
procedural sub-genre.
My point wasn't that I was insulted at being labeled a
"leftist." My point was that to interpret the cop story as
essentially leftist was to misread the vast majority of cop
stories. I don't necessarily buy the contention that
EVERYTHING is political, even the eschewing of politics, but
to the extent that that viewpoint is correct, and to the
extent that the police procedural is political at all, then
it's fundamentally conservative. And frankly, that seems
obvious on its face.
And your interpretation of the police procedural as being a
form that is discourages the depiction of individual heroism
is just as flawed. Not only are there hundreds of examples
from fiction that prove exactly the opposite, there are
hundreds of examples from real life. The cops in a well-done
police procedural are "regular guys" (or, increasingly, gals)
who, despite their being regular guys, are capable of great
heroism. I think it's the hint that regular guys ARE capable
of individual heroism is part of what makes the procedural a
popular form.
JIM DOHERTY
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