Kevin Burton Smith wrote:
> Fantasy is, indeed, the
> great equalizer. Chandler and Hammett made their
fictional worlds
> seem real, and that's what's important, not whether
Hammett ever
> really investigated a stolen ferris
wheel.
In Paul Challen's recent biography of Elmore Leonard, Jack
Batten (journalist and mystery writer) talks about the
authenticity of dialogue. He says Leonard's characters "talk
like Elmore Leonard people. You rarely hear people talking in
such an interesting and funny way. I'm sure he or his
researcher would hang out with, say, somebody in the
loan-sharking business, and ask,
'How do you do collections?' So there would be expressions --
a few expressions that loan-sharking people would use that
are common in the business, that are quirky and colorful. And
so Leonard would just latch on to those."
In other words, authentic dialogue is the result of a vivid
imagination and a knowledge of trade jargon.
Leonard himself responded to questions about the realism of
his doalogue:
"Well, that's it. All the ones who say, 'It's so realistic'
--how do they know?"
Point being that the dialogue isn't authentic, but it catches
the way the reading public imagines the characters would
talk. As for the reality of PI fiction, perhaps the most
successful authors capture the way their readers would like
to think they would behave if they themselves were tough-guy
detectives? And perhaps depictions of those mean streets,
where most nights almost anyone could walk without
encountering anything more dangerous than an obnoxious drunk,
describe a world of random violence and death that could only
be conjured in snug, middle-class, suburbs?
Kerry
-- <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<LOOKING FOR FUN>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The evil that men do lives after them at http://www.murderoutthere.com
Literary events in Ontario's Golden Horseshoe and around the world at http://www.lit-electric.com
<<<<<<<<<<<IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES>>>>>>>>>>>>
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