-------Original Message------- From: Mario Taboada <
matrxtech@yahoo.com> Sent: 08/06/03 08:08 AM To:
rara-avis@icomm.ca Subject: Re: RARA-AVIS: Assumptions,
Anyone?
>
> Nava, I have never read. Is he good? Brandstetter
doesn't have much to do with women, so I can't tell how
seriously they take him. The classic PIs that Jay brought up
preferred women, and that's what I addressed. Very many
modern PIs are women written by women, which should correct
the (fictional) balance somewhat.
- - - - - -
Actually, that "doesn't have much to do with women" was the
point of my note. In attempting to avoid a hectoring tone, I
wound up a bit like those characters in "Maurice" (both
Forster novel and Merchant/Ivory movie) who hem and haw and
refer uncomfortably to "disorders of the, ahem, Oscar Wilde
Sort." "What about persons of the Hansen/Brandstetter,
Nava/Rios sort?", I was more-or-less asking.
The "assumption" I was attempting to question was the
assumption that the universe -- in this case, the
Hard-Boiled-slash-Noir literary universe -- is entirely
"heterosexual until proven otherwise." The tendency of meny
hetero writers-of-commentary and/or opinion-slingers to
assume such things is, depending on the moment's mood, either
amusing (hence my rolled eyes) or irritating. I believe that
Adrienne Rich's phrase for such blinkered critical vision is
"forced heterosexuality."
It's just that when people start using the word "man" as,
seemingly, a stand-in for "hetero and male like the only
people that we care to talk about thank-you-very-much," I
start getting restive ...
My knowledge of Nava is, I'm afraid, second-hand. Instinct
told me (wrongly?) that his Henry Rios books are
worthy-but-dull. The bit of Hansen that I *have* read seemed
solid and yet less than exciting -- although I do remember
enjoying "Fadeout."
That's the sort of writing that drives me back to the
excesses of ever-problematic, ever-enjoyable Cornell
Woolrich. Hoo-boy, that "Jane Brown's Body"!
Chris
P.S. Anyone have anything to say about the recommedability
of, say, John Morgan Wilson or Richard Stevenson or Mark
Richard Zubro or R.D. Zimmerman?
-- # 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 : 06 Aug 2003 EDT