Congratulations to Bob Skinner on your new contract!
I too saw Elmore Leonard on the latest Land's End catalog.
And I also
just finished the ARC of Be Cool, the new Chili Palmer book.
It's due
February 7th, and it's funny! I think Leonard had more fun
writimng this
one than any of his others, including Maximum Bob. Chili is
still cool,
the dialogue is crisp and natural and really shows off
Leonard's ear for
how people speak. Leonard lets his characters demand their
own downfall,
and they do demand it. I think Be Cool is better than Get
Shorty.
I have read and will read whatever Richard Barre writes. I
think he's a
fine writer; in his own way, as fine a stylist as Jim Sallis,
Elmore
Leonard, Bob Skinner (yes), Walter Moseley, and a handful of
others I
shouldn't be forgetting. I like the emotional aspects of his
stories that
others don't. Ever since I read Poe's M. Dupin, I look to see
if the
detective is just solving a puzzle or dealing with a real
"horror.." The
games stuff--Sherlock or Poirot--is empty at heart. The body
stuffed up
the chimney now, well, there's a horror that ratiocination
must come to
grips with. Hardesty's lost son, the children buried in the
desert--if he
didn't ruminate on those connections, then he's a
machine.
In 1949 Chandler wrote Alex Barris, "the time comes when you
have to
choose between pace and depth of focus, between action and
character,
menace and wit. I now choose the second in each case."
So does Barre, in my book.
Chandler also wrote (about Marlowe), "If you ask me why he is
a private
detective, I can't answer you . . . . The private detective
of fiction is
a fasntastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He
can be
completely realistic in every sense but one, that one sense
being that in
life as we know it such a man would not be a private
detective. The
things which happen to him might still happen to him, but
they would
happen as a result of a peculiar set of chances. By making
him a private
detective, you skip the necessity for justifying his
adventures."
I see a lot of PI books where the writer is fantasizing about
being a PI
himself. The writer devotes a ton of paper and ink to
describing what
kind of scotch the PI drinks, what kind of car he drives,
etc. That kind
of stuff doesn't bother me; it's "PI as harmless," or "PI
light."
Sue Grafton told Publishers Weekley earlier this year that
"Fantasy is the
Great Equalizer." Okay, her Kinsey Milhone was how Grafton
took
control of her life and refashioned it into a fantasy. Now
that
Grafton is rich and successful, the fantasy doesn't work as
it initially
did. So her stories get harder for her to write, the 1998
Kinsey does
stupid things that the 1985 Kinsey would never do, and the
readers are
starting to notice (and kvetch.)
Ross Macdonald used to say the story is the victim's story,
and the PI is
how the victim (usually the corpse) gets avenged. The PI? Why
describe
him? He describes himself by what he says and what he does.
There is no
single Sherlock Holmes story where Sherlock looks like the
mental image we
now carry in our mind. It was a novel (The Hound of
Baskerville) and 80
short stories that formulated that image.
I love those kind of stories where the PI's goal is to avenge
the victim.
I love characters who are hard-boiled enough to ruminate over
dead
infants, and veterans who have trouble fitting back in
society. I like
plot, but I LIKE the battle between reason and horror
more.
I love the Maltese Falcon for a lot of reasons. The flitcraft
Parable is
one of the reasons the Falcon is special. The only other
fast-paced story
of violence that just as suddenly stops the action to
ruminate on
mortality and death is Hamlet. The Gravedigger scene in the
last act is
very similar to the Flitcraft Parable.
"The beams stop falling." You go back to the person you
always were.
Spade is talking about sudden death, telling Brigid how much
human beings
are scripted into their own destinies. She's not listening to
him; as
soon as he finishes telling this story so precisely, "she
left her chair
and stood in front of him, close."
She's demanding her own downfall. And later Spade describes
his dead
partner Archer, "He was a sucker for women. His record shows
that--the
only falls he took were over women. And once a chump, always
a chump."
The leopard can't change his spots; neither can Brigid or
Flitcraft.
Right after Spade tells Gutman they are going to need a fall
guy, "the way
to handle them is to toss them a victim, somebody they can
hang the works
on," Spade says, "At one time or another I've had to tell
everybody from
the Supreme Court down to go to hell, and I've got away with
it. I got
away with it because I never let myself forget that a day of
reckoning was
coming."
"Day of reckoning" is Judgment Day. The next falling
beam.
Lastly, I think I read somewhere that Hammett knew exactly
what a rare
monster that Wembley was. It stood out; Spade knew it and so
did the
cops.
See you next year
Frederick Zackel
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