Re: RARA-AVIS: Hadboiled Faulkner

From: Chris Schneider ( chrisaschneider@earthlink.net)
Date: 13 Jul 2003


> on 7/13/03 1:43 PM, Graham Powell at bleekerbooks@hotmail.com wrote:
>
> I would suggest "That Evening Sun" as another hardboiled Faulkner tale. [...]
> It seems to me that His writing wasn't as straightforward as most crime
> writing

         If you'll forgive a teensy bit of "Duh! Factor" ... what about
      Faulkner's "Sanctuary"? That's the one with crime and sexual
      violation and plenty of nasty attitude. It's also, of course, the
      book that James Hadley Chase famously raided to create "No Orchids
      For Miss Blandish."
         Faulkner also created his own detective -- Gavin Stevens -- around
      whom he wrote his "Knight's Gambit" stories.
         And as for Faulkner's writing not being "straightforward" -- he's
      at least as straightforward as Proust or Garcia Marquez! In other
      words, "straightforward" is not what the man does ... and looking for
      direct linear narrative in Faulkner is something akin to looking for
      fistfights in "What Maisie Knew." It ain't gonna happen.
         

                                                      Chris

      P.S. By the way, isn't Duane Spurlock's talking (7/12/03) of "Wild
      Palms" in isolation from "Old Man" a bit like talking about Kitty and
      Levin in "Anna Karenina" with no reference whatsoever to Anna or
      Vronsky? "Wild Palms"/"If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem" isn't a
      collection of stories, odd publishing history notwithstanding. It's a
      *novel*, something where two plots are woven together like snakes
      around a caduceus.

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