on 7/24/03 1:08 PM, Mario Taboada at
matrxtech@yahoo.com wrote:
> Warning: Softboiled reminiscence.
>
> When I was in college, my instructor in creative
writing
> brought to class a Conrad passage very similar to
the one
> Miker quoted and, after reading it, triumphantly
asked the
> class:
>
> How would you improve on this?
<<>>
Writing styles go in and out of favor, although perhaps not
as rapidly as hemlines or shoes.
Hemmingway, Thomas Wolfe and a long string of others that
fail to come to mind at the moment, are perennially in or out
of fashion. I like them both, which says something, but I'm
not sure what.
Certainly HOD qualifies as noir. And it was very unusual, for
it's day, in that it had no 'happy ending'. I would also
offer MOBY DICK as noir, or at least part of the foundation
of the genre.
I suspect that one of the reasons long sentances, adjectives,
adverbs and other devices are out of favor is due to the
reading habits and abilities of the current generation
(including mine, the BBs). Everything is short now. Quick
cuts in movies. Frantic camera work on TV series.
Perhaps it will cycle around again and I'll be able to use
the long sentences I so enjoy.
Thanks, as always, for the wonderful discussions on this
list. Makes me wish I were a bit smarter.
Miles Archer THE EMERALD TRIANGLE NovelBooks, Inc.
-- # Plain ASCII text only, please. Anything else won't show up. # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 24 Jul 2003 EDT