Al, I remember when reading the essay that the thought came
to my mind, "Boy, Orwell would have REALLY hated Jim
Thompson...and I don't even want to think about Brent Easton
Ellis..." But then, that streak of unpredictable
curmudgeoness is what I always liked about both Orwell and
Mencken also.
Along the topic of hard boiled/noir/morally ambiguous
novels of the 1940's, I wanted to toss out, wasn't Jonathan
Latimer's SOLOMON'S VINEYARD published in England
unexpurgated about this time, but then it had to be cut or
censored for it's American printing? Does anyone else
remember if I'm correct on that?
Steven H.
Al Guthrie <
allanguthrie@ukonline.co.uk> wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "Steven Harbin" <
coachhollywood67@yahoo.com>
>He appears to have detested what it and it's
popularity stood for, while
realizing that it was still well written.
As you say, Steven. Next time I'll read the whole essay
before quoting from it. So, yes, Orwell's clearly no fan of
hardboiled literature. Prefers his cricket-playing gentleman
thieves. "No Orchids" takes an unfair bashing for being the
most overt and succesful example of the American colonization
of English popular crime fiction. But dissing an entire
sub-genre hardly tells those of us who enjoy that particular
sub-genre whether a book is any good.
"A brilliant piece of writing", which is how Orwell describes
it, does.
Interesting comments on the expectations of the times. Among
other things, Chase gets it in the neck for daring to blur
the lines between good and evil, which is apparently okay in
"a serious novel" but not in "lowbrow fiction" where "one
still expects to find a sharp distinction between right and
wrong and between legality and illegality."
Al
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