Ron Clinton
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Sullivan <ANONYMEINC@webtv.net>
To: rara-avis@icomm.ca <rara-avis@icomm.ca>
Date: Sunday, October 18, 1998 9:42 AM
Subject: RARA-AVIS: Prison Writers
Edward Bunker did plenty of time. He has written the great No
Beast So
Fierce (also printed under the movie tie-in title Straight
Time, for
which he wrote the screenplay), Animal Factory, Little Boy
Blue and Dog
Eat Dog. He has done some film work, Straight Time and
co-writing
Runaway Train. Plus he has made cameo appearances in a couple
of films,
including Reservoir Dogs as Mr. Brown.
There is also Nathan Heard who wrote Howard Street. Although
it has
many of the same characters as the usual blaxploitation novel
or film,
Howard Street is really something more. The best description
I've seen
of it said it was what you would get if Hubert Selby Jr. were
black and
wrote for Holloway House (publisher of Iceberg Slim and
Donald Goines,
among others).
Speaking of which, I have been meaning to ask, do books like
those of
Iceberg Slim, Goines and Jess Mowry qualify as hardboiled?
Mowry, by
the way, wrote Way Past Cool about a gang of kids just trying
to cope
with the reality of their inner city lives, trying to keep
drugs off
their block, keep the entrance to their buildings clear so
their moms
won't be hassled when coming home from working their second
jobs, etc.
These kids can be pretty hardboiled in their actions (using a
spray-can
flamethrower to discourage a junkie from ripping off a
neighbor lady's
old TV), but can also just be kids, trying to get their
spelling right
on their "what I did on my summer vacation" essay. The book
can be
thrilling and heartbreaking, sometimes at the same
moment.
Mark
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