Peter Walker (pw@pw.cablenet.co.uk)
Wed, 23 Jun 1999 11:52:36 +0000
Bill........... Is Hannibal hard-boiled? My first response to
this is why me? There has been so much in rara in even the
last few days that is debatable HB that I wonder why this is
an issue now? Eg Sabastian Japrisot "Lady With etc" - not Hb
and very probably phsychological and therefore worthy of
rec.atrs.mystery. In order to sustain this point of view you
could at least be consistant. One example maybe but a quick
look over recent postings highlights many other examples,
Here's a good one:
>If Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy is correct, Western
Civilization is
> over....
Maybe that belongs to rec.arts.bullshit. Put it another way.
Here are some key HB themes all covered in Hannibal: Child
abuse Police corruption / Political corruption Corrupt
Wealthy Buisnesmen (subverting the law etc) Women / Strong
women characters (are they HB?) Ok? Take James Ellroy. He
wrote a serial killer book as well though claerly we carn't
discuss this. Or Michael Connolly's book The Poet? Nope. Both
there writers are HB - are they? Or are they glorified police
procedurals? Are polie procedurals Ok for this list? Mark
Sullivan wrote:
> In cozies, all of society's ills are
ritually
> bound within the person of the murderer. When s/he
is caught,
> society is rid of evil and again makes sense -- the
crime was an
> aberration. In hardboiled and noir (snip) the evil
is systemic
> and the capture, incarceration and/or death of the
criminal is a
> symbolic victory at best. It is clear to everyone,
writer,
> character and reader alike, that the particular
crime was not
> unusual at all.
> A serial killer, however, is defined as being
outside of society,
> therefore his actions are no indictment of the
society. If his
> making is explored at all, it is always given a
singular,
> psychological explanation, not a sociological one.
And when this
> unique serial killer is caught, society can return
to normalcy.
But this is exactly - well pehaps not exactly - the point of
the end of Hannibal. The killer inside us (whopps another
reference to a psychological novel by some guy called Jim
Thompson - should we go for
rec.arts.booksthatdontfitintodefintions ?) idea at the end -
we create out own killers, society is rotten, etc etc -
sounds like HB. There is one great little scene in Hannibal
where Lector goes to an exhibition on torture everyday and
steps inside the ropes not to look at the exhibits but to
lean on the wall and watch the crowd. My point - apart from
the fact that I enjoyed the book a lot and wanted to chat
with people about it because I thought 'what the hell'
- is that at least compared to some (or a lot) of the stuff
we cover here this was at least worth a chat. Peter.
Peter
-- # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Wed 23 Jun 1999 - 06:56:05 EDT