--- Mark Sullivan <
DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net> wrote:
> Faber was Scudder's Superego, while Mick
> is his Id. It could
> be interesting to see how Scudder operates
without
> that shoring. (I
> haven't read Hope to Die, yet, so I don't know if
it
> really has made a
> difference; I'm just speculating.)
I finished HOPE TO DIE yesterday. It is, in my opinion, one
of the best in the series. Without Faber, Scudder returns to
some of his older compensating mechanisms--I won't give them
away here, but any Scudder fan will spot them pretty
quick.
Only one complaint--several writers who write in the 1st
person have lately added chapters, often written in italics,
written in the third person. Parker did this in CRIMSON JOY
and THIN AIR; Burke did something similar, but a bit more
subtley, in PURPLE CANE ROAD. Anyway, Block does it here, and
I know exactly why he does it, as will anyone who reads the
book, but it tends to get on my nerves. I guess I'm a
purist--first person is first person, and interludes of
someone else's point of view don't belong there.
To his credit, Block makes these chapters less intrusive than
Parker, and has both better characterization and a better
justification for writing these intrusions in the first
place. Burke did it exceptionally well, I thought--I didn't
even notice what he was doing until the third or fourth
"intrusion." (Actually, Burke didn't change points of
view--he just had Robicheaux narrate a bunch of info he
couldn't possibly have known--events in the distant past to
which there were no witnesses, etc.) However, a professor of
mine who's also a Burke fan was annoyed by those passages, so
maybe it was just me.
Can anyone think of anyone prior to Parker who inserted this
type of chapter into a first-person narration? If not, this
may be another of Parker's innovations--although I would have
to argue that it is an innovation of questionable
value.
Anyway, HOPE TO DIE is a good Scudder. I think Block at his
worst still beats the heck out of a lot of other people--and
this is NOT Block at his worst. EIGHT MILLION WAYS TO DIE and
WHEN THE SACRED GINMILL CLOSES are very hard books to
supercede, but HOPE TO DIE is up there with the best books of
the series.
G.
===== George C. Upper III, Editor The Lightning Bell Poetry
Journal http://www.lightningbell.org/
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