Hey - O ---
I don't want to be one to belittle anyone's ideas about
definitions and god knows definitions can be convenient, just
so long as all parties know exactly what it is that is being
defined. The rest of you can go
"discuss" it, back behind the typewriter. That's entertaining
too.
Over the last -- wow -- nearly thirty years I've interviewed
W.R. Burnett, Jonathan Latimer, Bob Wade, Dorothy Hughes,
Richard Maibaum, A. I. Bezzerides, Judson Philips, Wyatt
Blassingame, Bill Cox, Richard Sale, Robert Bloch, John
Bright, Howard Browne, Talmage Powell, William Campbell
Gault, Robert Colby, Dennis Lynds, George Harmon Coxe, Roy
Huggins, Sid Fleischman, Dean McGaughy and a couple other
notables. I'm writing fast so I apologize for any
misspellings that have crept in. Now, with a new-found sense
of my own mortality, I'm trying to push this heap of data
into a book form and it looks like its going to be at least
in part a Q and A form because frankly, I don't know if I
have enough time for anything else. So try to find some
commonality with this group. Noir, mystery, hard-boiled?
Maybe all these things.
My mentor, Niven Busch, has barely appeared in these
discussion, but I think you'll find the opening pages of his
novel, The Hate Merchant, to be about as tough as it
gets.
It's nice to share the thoughts of the knowledgeable
correspondents on this list. For years I've had difficulty
explaining to people exactly what it is that I've been doing.
Usually if I use the word "mystery" people start to
understand, though there's hardly a mystery amongst the
mountain of books produced by this mob.
And time changes things. Writing has become more inclusive.
Though I cherish the writing, and the memory of Dorothy
Hughes, my group, the old-timers, was primarily a male club.
Women were not even permitted at many of the get-togethers
and if you look through the old pulps, you don't find many
women's names on the tables of contents. It may not be
politically correct, nor genetic, but I'm not too intimidated
to label the writing, historically, as a male domain.
So I tell people that I'm writing two books. A funny one,
with the cartoonist Rick Geary (who of course has done his
beautiful graphic novels on Jack the Ripper, H.H. Holmes,
Lizzie Borden, and the assasinations of James Garfield and
Abraham Lincoln), and the crime book.
I use the definition of Mike Tildon, the well-respected
editor of the
"Dime" series of Popular Publications pulps. He called
it
"crime-adventure". That works for me, as well as that
pantheon of scribblers I've been fortunate enough to
meet.
Thanks for the chance for a little bit of an introduction and
the shameless plugging.
David L. Wilson Downieville, CA
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 03 Oct 2005 EDT