Speaking of schticks and contrived pictures has anyone else
seen the author photo of Lawrence Block in the black
turtleneck and beret? Unintentionally hilarious. I'm glad he
had to good sense to stop using that one.
On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 2:51 PM, Kevin Burton Smith
<
kvnsmith@thrillingdetective.com> wrote:
> Vicki wrote:
>
>> Dave is really a sweetheart, as are 99.9% of the
noir writers I've
>> met,
>> including Ellroy, but don't tell any of them
that I let out the news!
>
> That was something that some of you may have missed
in my recent post
> about Ellroy.
>
> I KNOW a lot of his persona IS an act, schtick he
trots out because it
> sells books. I mean, he calls himself Mad Dog,
greets crowds by
> calling them perverts and pansies, and regales his
fans and the press
> regularly with stories of his murdered mother and
tales of his life as
> a second story man, breaking into apartments to
sniff young girls'
> panties. He's playing a character in public. In
real, one-on-one life,
> I have no doubt he's a much nicer, less cartoonish
person. He couldn't
> do the work he has done if he wasn't.
>
> He may even be a sweetheart.
>
> But you're right, Vicki -- he'd probably have us
killed for saying it.
>
> * * * *
>
> I've always been fascinated by the cult of
(occasionally faked)
> personality that some writers indulge in. And
occasionally irritated,
> particularly when the disciples take it too
seriously, or the floor
> show gets too silly or strident.
>
> Some of it seems harmless enough, but some of it
veers uneasily
> between comic and tragedy. Ross Macdonald posing in
a private eye
> fedora on the back of his paperbacks in the eighties
or Grafton beside
> a VW Bug, Spillane being photographed with guns, or
Hemingway
> selectively pumping up his "war" experience -- it
all seems somehow of
> a piece. And then there are other authors who chose
not to hock their
> lives and simply let their writing speak for itself,
a prime example
> being Chandler who actually WAS a war
hero.
>
> Yeah, yeah, yeah... Hammett and Joe Gores were real
life private eyes,
> and Wambaugh was a real cop. We know, we know. And
any number of self-
> proclaimed (and occasionally real) fuck-ups
regularly cough up noir.
> But that's ultimately just trivia -- fun to know but
so what?
> Ultimately, if they weren't good writers, who would
give a damn?
>
> And I've had more than a few run-ins myself with
alleged hard-boiled
> writers more obsessed with their "street cred" than
actually writing a
> coherent sentence. But the world's closets are
filled with unsold
> copies of self-published books written by people who
write "what they
> know."
>
> As though what's in a novel's author bio would ever
matter more than
> what's on the actual pages.
>
> * * * *
>
> Hey, maybe Ed should start calling himself "Sleeping
Dog," then he and
> Mildly Peeved and Mad can go on tour as the Amazing
Crime-Writing Dog
> Brothers! I envision a multi-coloured school
bus.
>
> Kevin
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been
removed]
>
>
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