Re: RARA-AVIS: Salt River by James Sallis

From: Brian Thornton (bthorntonwriter@gmail.com)
Date: 08 Jan 2009

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    I find all of this back-and-forth on Sallis pretty amusing, in light of the fact that Sallis professes to despise labels. It's entirely possible he'd be offended by any of these attempts to quantify his work.

    Yep, he's *that* "literary"/"artistic"/what-have-you.

    Even if he didn't despise labels, he doesn't really consider his own work
    "crime fiction."

    (Never mind that he goes to "crime fiction" events, such as Bouchercon)

    As for his views on noir: it "is a devalued, meaningless word."

    (and yes, those are his actual words, quoted verbatim from an email he sent me last Summer)

    Oh, and Mario, if you like stuff that's slow moving and only gives you information in small doses, have you read Nicholson Baker's THE MEZZANINE? It's a novel about an office worker's ride up an escalator.

    One ride.

    Hundreds of pages.

    I kid. Seriously, reading that thing was like watching paint dry.

    ;)

    Brian

    Brian

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