Hmm, re Elmore Leonard, I don't see how he can't be
considered a major innovator. I actually see him as THE major
innovator of the past thirty years. Though I wouldn't
consider Leonard a noir writer
(to me his major books are pure crime fiction), I think he
picked up on what George V. Higgins did, with
dialogue-driven, character- driven, vernacular-driven crime
fiction, and took it to another level. Leonard also is an
outstanding plotter, an aspect of writing that I think is
ignored, or taken for granted, by many critics. I think it
takes at least as much to skill to craft a great plot as it
does to craft a great sentence, and Leonard is a genius at
both. Jason S
--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Steve Novak
<Cinefrog@...> wrote:
>
> Thanks for your input Mark...To answer your input
and some others
too, I¹d
> say that Leonard, Lehane/Ellroy are excellent
writers, superb ones
> sometimes, but they are not innovators of the genre
which is was the
> original question by AD...Innovators could be 20 or
80 years old,
that
> doesn¹t even enter into the picture, but the
question originally
asked
> concerned publications done since about the turn of
this century
(if that is
> a valid boundary?)...and innovators goes a lot
deeper than
successful books
> at the box office...it has to do with
fundamental
> transformations/alterations to the genre in terms of
style, voice,
> locations, subjects, characters, plot lines and it
is directly
linked to
> different conceptions about writing, about
stylistics and what one
would
> call the Œpolitics¹ of the genre...A prime example
is the
transformation
> brought by people like Manchette in France in the
70¹s (see
> http://www.domenicstansberry.com/newsletter.htm
for example) and as
AD
> pointed out those brought about by people like
Dantec or
others...trends are
> less formalized (or simply less Œadvertised¹) here
but they do
exist and any
> info is valuable...
> I¹m very curious about Sallis and Jack O¹Connell in
that context
and would
> love to know more about your opinion about
them...
>
> Many thanks in advance
>
> Steve Novak
>
>
>
>
> On 3/1/07 6:02 PM, "DJ-Anonyme@..."
<DJ-Anonyme@...> wrote:
>
> > I forget, was the question who has changed noir
writing or who is
now
> > changing noir writing? While Leonard would
certainly fit into the
> > former category, isn't he a bit of an old
master for the latter?
> >
> > I'd say Ken Bruen certainly fits here. Not
meaning to restart
the coat
> > tails debate over him again, but one thing that
struck me as odd
about
> > it was that everyone, even his many defenders,
seemed to place
him among
> > the old guard. Yes, he is chronologically older
than many of the
> > younger generation, and he has written a lot
more books than most
of
> > them have, but he's done it in just over 10
years. For instance,
most
> > would call Jason Starr a member of the new
guard, but his first
novel,
> > Cold Caller, came out just two years after
Bruen's first
published crime
> > novel, Rilke on Black.
> >
> > Two others that I'd definitely say have been
doing new things
with noir
> > in the last decades or so are James Sallis,
both in his Lew
Griffin
> > series and in standalones, and Jack O'Connell,
who based his
series
> > around a city, Quinsigamond, not recurring
characters.
> >
> > Mark
> >
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been
removed]
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 13 Mar 2007 EDT