southpaw@altavista.net
Fri, 3 Dec 1999 16:43:34 -0400
The New York Times has an infrequent series of pieces by
writers on the life and craft of writing. So far, the likes
of Saul Bellow, Annie Proulx, and Richard Ford have weighed
in.
Going through the archive of these
articles, I was taken with Ed McBain's witty missive on
writing pulp fiction, and of different subgenres to the pulp
story.
The article is entitled, "She Was Blond. She Was in Trouble.
And She Paid 3 Cents a Word." and it was published in the NYT
last March. The entire article can be found at:
http://www10.nytimes.com/library/books/032999mcbain-writing.html
Here's a quote:
> For me, Private Eye stories were the easiest of
the
> lot. All you had to do was talk out of the side
of
> your mouth and get in trouble with the cops. In
the
> P.I. stories back then, the cops were
always
> heavies. If it weren't for the cops, the P.I.
could
> solve a murder -- any murder -- in 10 seconds
flat.
> The cops were always dragging the P.I. into the
cop
> shop to accuse him of having murdered somebody
just
> because he happened to be at the scene of the
crime
> before anybody else got there, sheesh!
>
> I always started a P.I. story with a blonde
wearing
> a tight shiny dress. When she crossed her legs,
you
> saw rib-topped silk stockings and garters
taut
> against milky white flesh, boy. Usually, she
wanted
> to find her missing husband or somebody.
Usually,
> the P.I. fell in love with her by the end of
the
> story, but he had to be careful because you
couldn't
> trust girls who crossed their legs to show
their
> garters.
-- # 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 Fri 03 Dec 1999 - 16:44:49 EST