Vicki wrote:
> Dave is really a sweetheart, as are 99.9% of the
noir writers I've
> met,
> including Ellroy, but don't tell any of them that I
let out the news!
That was something that some of you may have missed in my
recent post about Ellroy.
I KNOW a lot of his persona IS an act, schtick he trots out
because it sells books. I mean, he calls himself Mad Dog,
greets crowds by calling them perverts and pansies, and
regales his fans and the press regularly with stories of his
murdered mother and tales of his life as a second story man,
breaking into apartments to sniff young girls' panties. He's
playing a character in public. In real, one-on-one life, I
have no doubt he's a much nicer, less cartoonish person. He
couldn't do the work he has done if he wasn't.
He may even be a sweetheart.
But you're right, Vicki -- he'd probably have us killed for
saying it.
* * * *
I've always been fascinated by the cult of (occasionally
faked) personality that some writers indulge in. And
occasionally irritated, particularly when the disciples take
it too seriously, or the floor show gets too silly or
strident.
Some of it seems harmless enough, but some of it veers
uneasily between comic and tragedy. Ross Macdonald posing in
a private eye fedora on the back of his paperbacks in the
eighties or Grafton beside a VW Bug, Spillane being
photographed with guns, or Hemingway selectively pumping up
his "war" experience -- it all seems somehow of a piece. And
then there are other authors who chose not to hock their
lives and simply let their writing speak for itself, a prime
example being Chandler who actually WAS a war hero.
Yeah, yeah, yeah... Hammett and Joe Gores were real life
private eyes, and Wambaugh was a real cop. We know, we know.
And any number of self- proclaimed (and occasionally real)
fuck-ups regularly cough up noir. But that's ultimately just
trivia -- fun to know but so what? Ultimately, if they
weren't good writers, who would give a damn?
And I've had more than a few run-ins myself with alleged
hard-boiled writers more obsessed with their "street cred"
than actually writing a coherent sentence. But the world's
closets are filled with unsold copies of self-published books
written by people who write "what they know."
As though what's in a novel's author bio would ever matter
more than what's on the actual pages.
* * * *
Hey, maybe Ed should start calling himself "Sleeping Dog,"
then he and Mildly Peeved and Mad can go on tour as the
Amazing Crime-Writing Dog Brothers! I envision a
multi-coloured school bus.
Kevin
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