An autobiography of my reading, eh? Nice to meet all you
people.
My reading of novels started in third grade with the Lord of
the Rings trilogy. Elementary school was pretty much fantasy
and pulp adventure like Edgar Rice Burroughs, Roger Zelazny
or Doc Savage, shading into more noir works like Moorcock
toward the end. Junior high added a bit of the
counter-cultural: Vonnegut, Casteneda, Woody Allen.
Highschool added dreary Eastern Europeans and existentialist
writers: Camus, Sarte, Kafka, Dostoevsky. In college, I piled
on the non-fiction in most categories. In my thirties I read
lots of third world stuff, paying particular attention to
folks like Garcia-Marquez, Amado, Frere and the works of
French post-modernists.
These genres have pretty much made up my reading pallette,
until the last several years. Despite dogged effort, I've not
learned to like spy fiction or mysteries. Mysteries, in
particular, annoy me. I've always believed that, once the guy
was dead, the story was over. I'm uninterested in who did it.
This used to frustrate my spouse, because I'd watch one of
her mystery programs until the murder occured, then go do
something else. Instead, I'm more interested in the whys,
both psychological and cultural. Unfortunately, "motives"
never seemed to provide a satisfying answer to the why?
question.
For some reason, however, I have found Max Allan Collins'
work to be very enjoyable. And that has brought me into the
mystery aisles once or twice a year.
A few years back, the cover art on the Vintage Black Lizard
reprints caught my eye as I walked past. I bought a few at a
used bookstore and read Willeford's Pick-Up. This "mystery"
lacked both murder AND detection. Instead, it was a
psychological exploration and, while about death to some
degree, was also about existential life. Since then, I've
acquired and read a lot of similar books. My eyes still glaze
over if I read a detective book by, say, Agatha Christie or
Ross McDonald. (Although, I think someone's mention of
McDonald's Freudian therapy will probably prove the key for
me to understand and appreciate the next McDonald I
read.)
Greg Swan, now forty-something.
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