--- On Fri, 6/20/08, Miss Gran <
misssaragran@gmail.com> wrote: Thanks patrick, but it
was really just stupidity on my end, not rising to a
challenge. It never occurred to me that people wouldn't like
the character for being a petty criminal or an addict. So it
wasn't really cleverness, just sheer dumb luck that it worked
out. I know people like josephine and I like them, so I just
assumed everyone else would like her, too.
*****************************************************************
Your blend of hard boiled detective story and noir was a very
interesting decision and one you don't see too often. Perhaps
if you didn't know you were doing it, that's why it was so
successful. Cain's and Thompson's protagonists were usually
con men or criminals but with a few exceptions, they involved
the reader with what was going to happen in the plot. They
usually didn't attenuate the reader's natural discomfort with
the protagonist's lifestyle by easing backstory into the plot
the way you do in DOPE. The one exception I can think of, and
there are probably others, is Thompson's RECOIL in which we
learn how the protagonist was sent to prison for a very dumb
bank robbery. But that protoganist was seeking atonement from
chapter one. Josephine is unrepentant from chapter one and
her special brand of integrity and sheer courage as well as
coming to understand the challenges she faced growing up
changes the reader's initial dislike to a kind of
admiration.
I think it's interesting that you say it never occurred to
you that people would be less than sympathetic to a drug
addict, prostitute, and petty criminal. Obviously you've
contemplated these types of life choices carefully in
creating Josephine Flannigan. Do you still maintain friends
who come from the counter culture? I ask because in my own
research I've come very close to this type of lifestyle,
myself. (Perhaps I did not know it was 'research' at the
time!) But in recent years I've withdrawn from it because I
just can deal with the madness that infects my life when I'm
around such people. How much real life is in Josephine?
I've ordered COME CLOSER on Amazon.
Thanks for your inspiration and talent.
Patrick King
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