> As far as I can
> tell, he is a realistic writer - and humor (what you
call "glibness") is
> an important part of reality. Come to think of it,
Leonard may be a
> perfect example of a very hardboiled author who is
not at all noir...
This makes some sense to me. I've also been puzzeling over
the one fellow's
statement that Pellecanos wasn't hardboiled. While he
typically writes
about one man's battle for his own version of good on
Washington's mean
streets, I'm starting to think Pellecanos may be more noir
than hardboiled.
For instance, Down by the River seems to be largely about
Nick's own
unrelenting drive toward self-destruction. While it wasn't a
surprise that
Nick is still alive at the end of the novel (because there's
more novels in
the series!), he certainly does his darndest to kill himself
every day:
cigarettes, alcohol, really stupid decisions (like drugging
himself before
going after the bad guys). So, although the novel was about a
P.I., the
downward spiral toward self destruction leads me to believe
it's more noir,
than hardboiled. So, maybe the gentleman was right.
Willeford's first Hoke Mosely novel, Miami Blues, is
particularly
interesting because it straddles both genres. Willeford tells
two stories:
the self destruction of the criminal and struggle for dignity
on the part of
the PI. (An aside: Ellroy tells almost exactly the same
story, but not
anywhere near as well, in Suicide Hill. Read these two novels
in sequence,
and you gain a real appreciation for the little things
Willeford does so
well.)
> In Leonard there is no sense of doom because he is a
cynical optimist -
> he doesn't think that the bad guys are very different
from the good
> guys, therefore there is no real "fall from grace"
and "impending doom"
> as there is in Goodis, Thompson, and some of
Willeford. For Leonard,
> there are not circles of hell, but just one big
hellish-funny bathtub
> that pretty much includes everyone.
Greg
swan@poboxes.com
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