Been reading through the excellent Library of America CRIME
NOVELS: AMERICAN NOIR OF THE 1930S & 40S.
A year late(?), finally read McCoy's They Shoot Horses, Don't
They? It's quite a performance, building conflicts, tension,
characters while restricting the action to the dance hall.
Sort of reminds me of Ship of Fools or Grand Hotel
(the movie) or an Agatha Christi, where everyone is contained
in one pressure cooker, while we wait to see how and who will
blow next. The film, as I remember, it didn't successfully
give the sense of social and physical claustrophobia.
Most impressed with William Gresham's Nightmare Alley and
Edward Anderson's Thieves Like Us. I earlier commented on
Nightmare Alley--a wonderfully depressing read, only
disappointing in that Gresham doesn't reveal more of the
tricks of the carny-spiritualist trade. Guess he saved them
for his Monster Midway, which is, I gather, a sort of
documentary of carny lore. Anyone read this one, or his
second novel Limbo Tower? Anderson has a wonderful ear and
certainly knows his characters--small town criminals, who
don't see anything particularly wrong with what they are
doing. At the same time, I felt I understood why they behaved
the way they did, and would eventually be caught or killed.
The way Bowie talks his way to certain decisions convinces
you that he couldn't have acted otherwise, at the same time
you know he's making the wrong decisions. Is Anderson's
Hungry Men worth a read?
The title of Thieves refers to a theme I notice in a lot of
30s fiction, which still seems quite relevant: the higher-ups
are "like us," except they get away with it or suffer much
less for what they do. The lawyer in Thieves goes into a rant
on how small town sheriffs and judges pick which folks will
feel the heat of the Law; newspaper accounts create an
atmosphere in which no one questions how and why criminals
and prisoners end up dead. As I remember, both film versions
of Thieves (Altman's and the earlier They Live By Night)
contain little of this larger theme.
Jim Thompson is another writer who manages to stick social
swipes of this kind in his novels. Loved the way Sheriff
Corey, in Pop. 1280, digs at the Pinkertons' tarnished
history:
[Commenting on how the agency broke a railroad strike]
"...that really took nerve, " I said. "Them railroad wokers
throwin' chunks of coal at you an' splashin' you with water,
and you fellas without nothin' to defend yourself with except
shotguns an' automatic rifles!"
Bill Hagen
billha@ionet.net
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