>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?
I'll try to stir up my addled memory as well as a reference
to the book,
if I can find it. As I remember it, the author of _The
Doomed
Detective_ traces noir detective fiction back to the
feulliton,
the "sleuth-tracks-villian" installments in French
newspapers
that were popular just before the turn of the century, I
believe.
He spends a chapter talking about the traces and following
them forward
and then gets into discussions on particular novels
by Calvino, Pynchon, Eco, and Robbes-Grillet?
Most of those authors were publishing in the seventies,
though post-modernists claim that no artistic work can fully
be
contained by the literary era or movement it was written
in.
We can even apply post-modernism to Milton and Homer.
Everything is possible, nothing is real: yadda, yadda,
yadda.
Again, don't take my word on all of these, I'm dragging
them
out the fog of my reading memory. I'll try to get you
the actual reference for the book, though.
It was pretty interesting. As a side note, the big Duke
critic
and post-modern/late capitalism theorist, Frederic
Jameson,
wrote an essay about Hammett and Chandler and their
subversive
post-modern, pulp politics. I'll find the reference to that
too.
>Borges? What Borges story fits this?
Charyn selected "Death and the Compass" for the
anthology.
It is an excellent noir crime story, though again, it
is
more post-modern in its style.
>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.
I agree. King is a hack. His attempt at hard-boiled
fiction,
"Umney's Last Case," was an insult to the genre.
If he had studied Thompson more
closely maybe he could have created some truly scary
stuff.
Ah, but he would've had to sacrifice the cash. I wasn't
trying to
suggest that King was interesting or pushing the form
like
Auster, Lethem, and Gibson, I just found it interesting
that
King was aware of him. I also want to emphasize that
Auster, Lethem, and Gibson extend the boundaries of the
form
whereas someone like Thompson extends the depth of the
form.
I myself came across Thompson late. About nine years
ago,
in _The Black Lizard Anthology_
I found his story "This World And Then The Fireworks."
I didn't pick him up again until last week,
when I tore through _A Swell Looking Babe_.
I must say I have found him one of the best I've read;
though, until I came to this group,
I came across few who even knew of him.
Because I live in a tiny town on the Hi-Line of
Montana,
the closest good bookstore is about 110 miles away
from me, but on my next trip, I'm going to sink some
bucks into Thompson's books. The oversized Vintage
paperbacks
are certainly worth the ten or twelve bucks,
and I usually cringe at paying more than three bucks
for a used paperback. I saw last year or so
that someone published his biography.
I'm sure it's been discussed out there already (in
fact,
wasn't it mentioned recently?).
If you don't mind repeating a previous thread,
what do you all think of it?
#
# To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
majordomo@icomm.ca.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/.