--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Doug Bassett
<dj_bassett@...> wrote:
>
> THE EIGHTH CIRCLE by Stanley Ellin: Well-written,
but
> further evidence to me that "realism" is a
literary
> method. Here Ellin's "realism" is mainly a lot
of
> pop-psych of the day. And while it may well be
true
> that PI work, when successful, takes a spiritual
toll
> on it's practioners, that just seems nowadays like
a
> literary device after Wambaugh, etc.
>
Certainly realism is a literary method, or what various
critics label "realism" in the various eras. It's been quite
a few years since I read Ellin's novel, and my memory may be
faded a bit, but I certainly don't recall it as a novel of
"realism" even in those pre- Wambaugh days of 1958.
I'm reading an even older PI novel THE RED RODS (1946) by
Dale Clark, who lived near enough at the time to Chandler for
Ray to comment negatively on his tennis style. I picked it up
because Anthony Boucher praised it in one of the San
Francisco newspaper columns. He reminds me of Howard Browne
in his early John Evans/Paul Pine novels.
Here's a short sample:
"He was a sawed-off, five-foot-four corpse with dirty
fingernails and a shirt he had changed Wednesday. He had
blood drying on his lip and in his big ears. He was clinical
details now."
Clark started in the pulps in the 1930s including a fair
number of stories in Black Mask. He clearly read his
contemporary Chandler closely but then so have we all in the
decades since. I always skipped Clark because his two Ace
doubles didn't look that interesting but reading Boucher's
praise of Clark's early hardback novels in the 1940s
convinced me to give him a look.
Richard Moore
RARA-AVIS home page: http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rara-avis-l/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email
to:
rara-avis-l-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 18 Feb 2006 EST