: As a result, I quickly became bored and stopped
reading.
Funny you should say that. I started reading the book last
night and
dropped it after about thirty pages or so, for the same
reasons.
: What did other people think? Does anyone have opinions on
the use of
: gratuitous violence in hardboiled literature? Is there even
such a
: thing as gratuitous violence in the genre?
I've never been sure what I think about gratuitous violence.
What is
and what isn't gratuitous seems to start a lot of arguments.
I have
read some very grisly and disturbing scenes - Ellroy's eye
socket
descriptions in _The Black Dahlia_, I think, are probably
near the top
- that turned my stomach but kept me reading because they
were well
written. Were they necessary? Not always. Whatever it was
about the
start of _Dora Suarez_, it just didn't grab me enough to keep
me
reading. Whether that's because of my preferences in writing
style or
content, I don't know, but I don't think I'll be going back
to
anything by Raymond anytime soon.
Hardboiled fiction, especially recent books, is usually
fairly
violent, but personally I find little of it gratuitous.
Bill
-- William Denton | Toronto, Canada | http://www.vex.net/~buff/ | Caveat lector. "'Whom are you?' said he, for he had been to night school." - George Ade
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