i'm currently reading 'dora suarez' tho not quite finished. i find it very powerful and moving. i previously read raymond's 'how the dead live'
i enjoyed duane's 'severance' immensely, as well as wheelman and blonde. i admit to bein a fellow philly boy, but i swear i'd his stuff anyway ;)
where does the movie you mentioned stand?
i really dug 'hard man' a lot.
as far as this thread and some others mentioned, i really love charlie huston's trilogy and the latest one. i liked 'shotgun rules' but not quite as much.
but i also love hard boiled, noir etc that isn't in this 'category'. as well as other crime and other genres and so called literary books. each book is what i go by. certainly i'll be at least interested in an author after liking one of his/her books.
oh and back to the beginning and nate flexer (?). i read the first chapter online and found it interesting but not overwhelming. i wasnt gonna run out and look for it. i had mixed feelings.
but i'm picky with what i even start to read and then what i finish, as time is limited and there are still so many classic (even just in the rara-avis world) books and authors i've not read yet. also, what my library has will influence what i read, as i no longer can afford buying books, certainly new ones, which i used to do on a regular basis.
--- On Wed, 6/17/09, Allan Guthrie <allan@allanguthrie.co.uk> wrote:
From: Allan Guthrie <allan@allanguthrie.co.uk>
Subject: Re: RARA-AVIS: Re: Slapstick-Silly Noir
To: rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com
Date: Wednesday, June 17, 2009, 4:15 PM
I'm not so sure I agree with the basic premise, gents.
I don't think "over-the-top" noir is a current trend. Pushing the boundaries
has always been part of the genre. In Caldwell's THE BASTARD, 1929, someone
is sawn in half. If that isn't our first introduction to the modern noir
novel, then it's second only to LITTLE CAESAR. James Cain was accused of
being over the top, taken to court for it in the case of SERENADE, and
Chandler famously took Cain's excesses to task, and even Cain's publisher
had reservations ("A surprising number of people in the book trade really
dislike the book intensely -- think it shocking, that it oversteps the line
of what is permissible to deal with in fiction" -- from a letter from Knopf
referring to THE BUTTERFLY). Horace McCoy was given a serious ass-kicking
for KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE -- for example, Time Magazine, May 10th, 1948:
"Literary Caveman Horace McCoy has driven to an absurd extreme the
hardboiled, feel-my-muscles style of James Cain and Dashiell Hammett, and,
to add cultural tone, has dipped into the bowely bathos of the
wasn't-Bix-wonderful, oh-blow-that-beautiful-horn school. The result is a
gutter-minded, gutter-tongued shocker of alley-cat sex, sadism and unmourned
murders." Jim Thompson is famous for being over the top ("The guy was over
the top. The guy was absolutely over the top. Big Jim didn't know the
meaning of the word stop." -- Stephen King); and what about Spillane? Ted
Lewis's GBH? Derek Raymond's I WAS DORA SUAREZ? It's hard to think of a
seminal noir writer who wasn't pushing boundaries, breaking taboos, being
extreme, whatever you might choose to call it.
And Mark, re ready-made for cinema: I agree, sort of. Certainly writers
these days almost all think in terms of 'scenes' rather than chapters. And
we're advised to 'show' rather than 'tell' (ie action-based, like a movie).
But in that respect, I don't think anything comes close to Hammett. His
books were ready made for the movies. And James Cain wasn't far behind. Btw,
as someone who co-wrote the screenplay adaptation for Duane's WHEELMAN,
although it was a lot of fun, it was far from straightforward. I suspect
that part of the reason his books are such attractive movie material is
because they're all very high concept. As well as being fast and
outrageously imaginative and full of surprise and suspense, etc, etc.
Al
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Sullivan" <DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net>
> I think that's a pretty good summary, Dave. But I think the influence is
> far more film than graphic novels (I know, you weren't pointing to them as
> influence, but as a reference point). I see it as following in
> Tarantino's wake, whether the authors are directly influenced by his films
> or the publishers recognized there might be a market in that type of
> material. For instance, Duane's Severance Package (and The Blonde,
> probably The Driver, too) seem ready made for film adaptation.
> I enjoy some of these overblown books very much (Duane's and those I
> mentioned in previous posts), but it would be a real shame if it
> overshadowed and crowded out the more gritty, realistic noir.
>
> Mark
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