: I guess what I'm getting at is this: Hard-boiled has found
its way
: into "post-modern" fiction (for lack of a better term) and
other
: genres. In fact, I found a book of essays once called _The
Doomed
: Detective_ that investigated the link between
post-modernism and
: hard-boiled detective fiction.
This sounds interesting. When does it suggest this started?
When
post-modernism started would be the answer, I guess, but who
knows
when that was. What are some of the first examples if offers
as
evidence?
: [Another writer] also includes those we might consider
more
: post-modern or noir than hard-boiled: Gabriel Garcia
Marquez, Jorge
: Luis Borges, Don DeLillo, Angela Carter, and Italo
Calvino.
Borges? What Borges story fits this?
: In fact, Stephen King, the megalomaniac of commercial
fiction, lists
: Jim Thompson, prophet of the hard-boiled cultists, as one
of his
: biggest influences (Jim Thompson, as far as I'm concerned,
should be
: included in every American Literature anthology). For those
of the
: more traditional hard-boiled readers among you, what is
your take on
: this? Does style, form, and genre keep you away from
authors that
: play loose with the form a bit, or is it more the general
"noir"
: mood that attracts you. Probably a bit of both, huh?
If they play too fast and loose with the genre, I'm less
likely to
hear of them. If I do, however, and the book is good, I'm
very
happy. (I've told some fans of pulp heroes about _The Count
of Monte
Cristo_, for example, and they loved it - there are
similarities
there.) You mention Paul Auster, and I'm sure most people
here would
like his New York Trilogy. I liked Lethem's _Gun_, but it
didn't grab
me as much as it grabbed a couple of friends. Stephen King
may praise
Thompson - and I'm glad, if some of his fans try out Thompson
- but I
don't think he's a very good writer, so whatever he may be
doing, I
won't find out.
Bill
--
William Denton | Toronto, Canada | http://www.vex.net/~buff/ | Caveat lector.
"It is better to incur a mild rebuke than to perform an onerous task."
-- "Uncle" Oswald Hendryks Cornelius
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