--- Michael Robison <
miker_zspider@yahoo.com> wrote:
I think that one of the reasons it's not
> easy is because the glass you need to look
through
> to
> see writing that will become classic is fogged
over
> with fashion. Right now successful violence in
a
> novel is totally faux pas. Very frowned upon
by
> enlightened citizenry. And yet the classics
are
> filled with it. Homer's two epics are filled
with
> glorious violence. So is Gilgamesh and Beowulf,
The
> Green Knight, the Bible, and just an
absolute
> buttload
> more. Bottom line is that those who
reject
> Spillane's
> chance of making it to the classics need to
make
> sure
> that their opinion is not clouded by
fashion.
************************************ Man, violence is as much
a part of modern literature as it is a part of television.
Show me any popular novel that doesn't depict violence or
graphic sex and then you'll have to show me the demographic
that made it "popular." The "fashion" against "violence" is
one the media: print and television news, would like people
to accept as happening right now, but these forces have
little effect on how real people think. Certainly, with the
exception of making people aware of books and movies they
might otherwise miss, media has little impact on popular
taste. If one wants to read a book, one wants something a bit
more substantial than going to Stop & Shop for a frozen
dinner and coming home and putting it in the microwave. The
biggest pit fall Mickey Spillane has to overcome on his road
to "classic", and frankly so does Ian Fleming and Sax Rohmer,
is the unsophistocation of their plot lines, the 2
dimentional limits of their villians, and their often racist
them/us mentality. This last aspect of these writers works is
their biggest hurdle. These books no longer reach only white
American & British readers. Even white readers find these
attitudes toward black and asian characters pragmatically
non-productive in the modern world. Spillane's concept of
Communists is completely passe and comical in veiw of modern
circumstances. You don't have this 2 dimentional stereotype
in thriller writers who are already "classics" like Green,
Forsyth and LeCarre. Communist character's beliefs and
predispositions are explored more often in these latter
writers. They're not "bad" just because they're
Communist.
Fleming, it's true, gave up the bad communist theme in favor
of a terrorist organization, SPECTOR, in the later James Bond
novels. But from an adult stand point, the plots are still
pretty thin. James Bond, of course, is an icon due to the
movie portraials. This status never got off the ground with
Mike Hammer because those movies didn't have the same success
the Bond films enjoyed. If Mickey Spillane becomes
"classic hard-boiled" fiction, it will be due to the books.
But it's the books' attitude toward reality, not their
violent content, that undermine their chances. Green,
Forsyth, LeCarre, Clancy & Cussler are all just as
violent. Their attitude about people tend to be more
universally current.
Patrick King
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