Folks,
Apologies for the BSP, but in case any of you are within
reach of a newsstand that carries the Sunday New York Times,
I thought you might be interested to know that Hard Case
Crime turns up twice in today's issue -- once in Marilyn
Stasio's "Crime" column in the Book Review, where she reviews
GRIFTER'S GAME by Lawrence Block, and once in the Fashion
supplement to the Times Magazine, where Jared Paul Stern uses
an excerpt from Max Phillips' FADE TO BLONDE to comment on
"pulp style."
Writes Stasio: "For the very good reason that I was too much
of a snob to read pulp fiction back then, I missed Lawrence
Block's 'Mona' when it was first published in 1961. But an
enterprising new publishing outfit has reissued this lurid
crime thriller under its original title, GRIFTER'S GAME (Hard
Case Crime, paper, $6.99), and slapped a nifty piece of
hard-boiled cover art on its kisser...the narrative is
layered with detail, the action is handled with Block's
distinctive clarity of style and the ending is a stunning
tour de force. Honestly, the things we miss when our heads
are buried in term papers."
And this from Stern: "The pulp fiction of the 1940's and 50's
may have disappeared from the dime store (as has the dime
store itself), but the noir look lives on. [If] a mug like
Quentin Tarantino...can make money off pulp's provocative
imagery, then why not revive the books themselves?...As for
fashion, it behooves us to take a page from the pulp
playbook. The heroes (or antiheroes) have a dark, dangerous
style to match their machine-gun patter, a way of dressing
that implies one is packing heat, not some prissy cell phone
that gives you stock quotes...Take this passage from 'Fade to
Blonde': 'He wore a snowy white shirt, a dark red tie figured
in dull silver, and a quiet charcoal suit that must have cost
more than any car I've ever owned. His suit was what my suit
wanted to be when it grew up.' Now, _that's_ the kinda sugar
Papa likes."
This, coming on top of enthusiastic pieces in New York
magazine
("their covers [seem] as suitable for framing as for
pulping") and USA Today ("All right! Pulp fiction lives!"),
makes me optimistic that our first books will reach the wider
audience we were hoping for, and give the line the "wind in
its sails" to keep going after the first dozen titles.
That said, word-of-mouth from someone who really knows and
loves this sort of fiction carries more weight than all the
newspapers in world. So if you know someone who might like
what we're doing and you could mention our books to them
(heck, Christmas is coming; how many gifts cost only $6.99
these days?), Max and I would be forever in your
debt...
Best, Charles
---------- Charles Ardai Editor, Hard Case Crime
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 19 Sep 2004 EDT