RARA-AVIS: Re: music shoutouts

From: Kevin Burton Smith ( kvnsmith@thrillingdetective.com)
Date: 04 Dec 2001


>Now I do wonder if anybody who's not an ACC basketball junkie got hung up in
>the Sweet Forever (I am one, and I loved it but I could see it being a
>sticking point).

Yeah, I had to ask, to confirm what I suspected. It didn't ruin the book for me, but it postponed my "Wow!" at the end of it for a few minutes, while I phoned a friend, to make sure I had the whole Bias story straight. See, George's books aren't just good, they're good for you. Bring on the sports edition of Trivial Pursuit!

Anyway, the story still worked. And the music shoutouts don't bug me either. They're appropriate for the characters, culturally, racially, socially, agewise. What would bug me would be a deep and abiding affection for something that would need too much of an explanation or a stretch, like why a rough and tumble kid grown into a rough and tumble adult only listens to Miles Davis or British music hall ditties. The music then becomes less a natural extension of the character and more of an affectation. If I don't buy the reason the character would like that sort of music, I guess it would be annoying.

And then, of course, there are those poor saps who don't "get" music at all. The fact a character doesn't like music at all may say just as much about him as Nick Stefanos' music says about him.

-- 

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