Re: RARA-AVIS: city vs country; gothic

From: Juri Nummelin ( jurnum@utu.fi)
Date: 09 Feb 2000


On Tue, 8 Feb 2000, ejmd wrote:

> > There is the aspect of the
> > corrupt city in almost every hardboiled/noir book/film, but there is
> > also the healing aspect of nature, e.g. in "The Asphalt Jungle".
> That's not just hb-/noir; I think that's part of a more general tendency
> in modernism: eg, Lawrence's city is 'the great wrong place' while the
> country is presented as idyllic.

You're absolutely right, but I didn't want to extend this discussion to Romantic poets (Wordsworth, Coleridge) and people like Rousseau and Herder. I think they are not hardboiled. With the possible exception of Rousseau - Herbert Stinson wrote a series about P.I. Pete Rousseau for Black Mask... But of course this dichotomy between town and country is prevalent in almost all Western texts since 1800.

Juri jurnum@utu.fi

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