>Carrie wrote:
>
>"All of the characters besides the Op are totally
static and basically
>flat. They don't change and only in a few instances
does the progress of
>the story reveal anything new about them."
>
Mark wrote:
>Why must a character change? (Yes, I know it's one of
the textbook
>traits of the novel.) To me, some of the nbest
hardboiled and noir
>revolves around a character who does not change, who
may even be
>actively fighting against changing, trying to hold
onto himself no
>matter what comes.
Well, first, I'm making no claims about what a character
"must" do but contrasting what Hammett does with his
characters with what I think most readers today expect out of
their characters. Certainly it's what readers and writers of
"literary" fiction are told to expect from characters. I'm
not making any "should" statements here. Also I'm allowing
two possibilities for a character driven story: characters
that change OR circumstances that reveal more about the
character. I think it was Yeats who talked about "character
isolated by a deed." I totally agree - both in terms of genre
and literary fiction - that it is a mistake to put too much
emphasis on "character change" versus "character revelation"
(often revelation by changed circumstances while the
character remains the same).
>
>You seem to contrast the Op and Spade, but how does
Spade change.
No I'm actually not as if you'll go back to the first
sentence in this post you'll see that I said "all of the
characters besides the Op" are static
(unchanging) and flat (no new levels revealed beyond our
first picture of them). Hammett shows the Op getting deeper
and deeper into the Poisonville morass, and in fact he does a
fair amount of mental hand-wringing about
"what kind of person is this turning me into"? (not that this
changes his behavior one bit, which I actually think makes
him more interesting).
As for Spade, I don't know that he actually changes, but
certainly more levels are revealed of him as the story
progresses. The hand shaking as he leaves the meeting with
the baddies comes to mind - that's not something I would have
expected based on the first page description; though as I'm
thinking about it, like many things in "Falcon" I can't
remember if it's in the book or just the film. I *think* it's
in the book though and it is a terrific character moment.
Also the revelation at the end that he's not as crooked as he
seems - itself open to lots of interpretations - and the
nuances of the relationship with Brigid are not the stuff of
static, flat characterization.
>He is
>the same person at the end of Falcon as he was at the
beginning, an
>amoral man defined by his job, who gives up the
possibility of change,
>through love, to remain the same man.
Well we may be getting hung up on definitions here, but I
think a character who faces possibilities and rejects them
has in fact gone through a number of changes, even if he
ultimately ends up in the same place (which again is open to
debate). Anyway, as well-plotted as "Falcon" is, it's the
interaction between Sam and Brigid that kept me interested,
moreso than the rara avis itself which is really just a
McGuffin to build the story around.
>
>ps -- Carrie, Touch is very good, but it is very
atypical of Leonard (a
>strange little book, but strange in a good
way).
"The Switch" is the audio book I checked out. What's this one
like? I'll find out myself when I get to the end of "dead
souls" by Ian Rankin; a page-turner, figuratively speaking,
but way too many plots. He makes Connelly look linear -
besides which, John Rebus is essentially the same character
as Harry Bosch; don't know off hand who's been around longer,
but other than having a kid and playing slightly better with
others, there's not a helluva lot of difference.
Carrie
*****************
"When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was
drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball
Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma,
California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring
afternoon."
-James Crumley, "The Last Good Kiss"
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