Aristotle in his "Poetics" said the audience should feel fear
and pity for the inevitable plight of the tragic hero. We
should feel pity because we can see ourselves in his shoes.
We should feel fear because we can see ourselves in his
shoes.
There but for the grace of God . . .
That's compassion.
Compassion isn't sentimentality, either. It's not a Hallmark
card, or a Kodak moment. It's not namby-pamby, or loaded with
saccharine. It's cold and remorseless and detached, like a
wifebeater or the freeway.
It knows the world for what it is. Its eyes are wide-open
like an owl's at midnight, and it knows what it's watching is
brutally pragmatic, and it sees its own face and features
staring back at it.
When you walk the mean streets after midnight, when you step
into those places where the cops and the paramedics haven't
gone yet, you better know the difference between the perp and
the victim. And when they are both and the same.
The Blue Hammer was Ross Macdonald & Lew Archer's last
book. I suggest you read that last chapter as a coda for both
men's lives. Both had been walking those mean streets for
decades and both of them had wide-open eyes. Macdonald wrote
stories about a man's journey to compassion.
Hard-boiled and noir -- if they are a freak show without
compassion -- they are hollow inside.
Frederick Zackel
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