Mario wrote:
"But they all do it: Willeford, Thompson, Goodis, Woolrich...
even William Campbell Gault in his marvellous noir _Death Out
of Focus_. For some reason, a noir story allows for greater
suspension of disbelief than other types of crime stories.
The reader apparently cuts the author a lot of slack in
exchange for a damn good yarn."
Of course, it's possible to push it too far. As much as I
like Goodis, parts of Dark Passage are so ridiculous they
completely pulled me out of the story, for instance, the cab
driver who recognized the escaped conivict, assumed he had
been framed AND just happened to know a a discrete plastic
surgeon. Come on. Don't know why I went on to read another
Goodis (probably wouldn't have if this hadn't been one of
four in a Black Box anthology), but I'm very glad I did, as
he's now one of my very favorites (even though some of the
others also have some pretty bad coincidences, just not that
bad).
Mark
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 22 Mar 2008 EDT