In a message dated 7/28/03 3:34:22 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
owner-rara-avis@icomm.ca writes:
<<
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 09:11:17 +0100
From: "Al Guthrie" <
allanguthrie@ukonline.co.uk>
Subject: Re: RARA-AVIS: Ken Bruen
- ----- Original Message -----
From: "Donna" <
donna.moore@virgin.net>
> He has another series set in London which is also
apparently very
> hard-boiled (I have them but not read them as yet),
and he's labelled as
> Brit-noir.
Definitely shouldn't be. He's Irish. About as British
as Joyce or Yeats.
Bruen knows noir first hand. Here's the intro to a
recent interview with
him:
"You're a teacher, for Christ's sake, taking a drink in
a pub in Rio de
Janeiro.
It's 1979: You're over there to teach presumably
grateful Brazilians to
speak English.
A fight breaks out.
You and every other European in the joint are rounded
up and jailed.
Bad enough, but your captors are sadistic
whack-jobs:
They shove your head into buckets of excrement and rape
you.
You slide into a self-described state of
"catatonia."
Your captors hold onto you for several months.
Half-a-year later you emerge
from the Brazilian jail, dangerously skinny and vaguely
suicidal. Upon
reflection, you decide not to take yourself out - why
let them win? (Your
fellow European inmates seemingly lack your
determination for survival and
soon die or go missing.)
Where do you go from there?"
The rest of the interview is available at:
http://www.modestyarbor.com/ken_brueninterview.html
Al >>
Thanks Al. I read the entire interview and found it of
interest because I so completely detested the opening novel
in his "trilogy." The police characters were unrealistic in
the extreme and somehow managed to be both uninteresting and
disgusting. This really is quite a trick. Normally a
character who is completely without redeeming qualities will
be of some interest even if it is in fascinated disgust as is
sometimes achieved in Harry Crews novels, a favorite of mine.
Knowing now that he was falsely imprisoned and raped by the
Brazilian police in 1979, helps me to understand his point of
view. I may even sample another chapter by him at some time
in the future. Well...I'm not positive of that last
point.
Richard Moore
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