tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4938060587020568315.post1952559345103803093..comments2024-03-29T09:22:57.031+00:00Comments on Declan Burke: Yet More Flummery On Defining Crime FictionUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4938060587020568315.post-7055297507113157262008-07-31T23:23:00.000+01:002008-07-31T23:23:00.000+01:00I agree with your first position -- but even by yo...I agree with your first position -- but even by your revised position, THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES, THE SCARLET LETTER and THE GREAT GATSBY are all still crime fiction.<BR/><BR/>For starters.<BR/><BR/>ClairEllen Clair Lambhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14944288413332520719noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4938060587020568315.post-16496666056769299382008-07-31T20:48:00.000+01:002008-07-31T20:48:00.000+01:00Bueller? Anyone? The 'peddling' was just a lucky g...Bueller? Anyone? <BR/><BR/>The 'peddling' was just a lucky guess, Ms Witch.<BR/><BR/>Philip, I totally agree ... I'm certainly not re-reading Chandler and Leonard for the big pay-off twist at the end ... it's all about luxuriating in the quality there. <BR/><BR/>Anon - anyone who can leave 'a platypus comment' anywhere is jake with me. And I'm well on board with your point ... Philip K. Dick is another marvellous genre-bender, and I reckon Ray Bradbury's DEATH IS A LONELY BUSINESS among the finest of noirs. <BR/><BR/>Cheers, DecDeclan Burkehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14322645323239292406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4938060587020568315.post-4978861015875661452008-07-31T17:48:00.000+01:002008-07-31T17:48:00.000+01:00I stand by the "platypus" comment which I posted a...I stand by the "platypus" comment which I posted at International Noir Fiction.<BR/>We do classify novels according to the presence of distinguishing features which we tend to consider central to a genre (or sub-genre).<BR/>The problem arises when a novel presents sets of characteristics associated with different genres (and yes, "literary" is also a genre).<BR/>I'm both a crime and science-fiction reader,and I can think of a few novels that are generally considedered science fiction,even though they really are crime novels at heart.<BR/>For example,Alfred Bester's <I>The Demolished Man </I> is a police procedural in a society were (thanks to telepathy) murder should be impossible,while Jo Walton's <I>Farthing</I> and <I>Ha'penny</I> <BR/>are respectively a country house murder mystery and a thriller set in an Alternate Forties Britain which allied itself with the Nazis.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4938060587020568315.post-91350573725000178092008-07-31T15:46:00.000+01:002008-07-31T15:46:00.000+01:00I think you are quite right there, Dec, as is your...I think you are quite right there, Dec, as is your wont. That was obviously so in the Golden Age whodunnit, where there was scarcely any other point to the book, but it remains true of all the various types of crime novel we have with us now, for the crime and its consequences always in some sense furnish the structure. I would only say -- and this is just a nice paradox, not a contradiction -- that it is sometimes the case that the finer the novel, the less important the crime comes to seem. I have on occasion been so taken with character, location, ambiance, dialogue and so on that I rather forgot there would be a denouement and was in no hurry at all to get to it, though I'd still be rather unhappy if it were not a satisfactory one.Philip Amoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11739418522974972567noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4938060587020568315.post-46284152408317761262008-07-31T09:40:00.000+01:002008-07-31T09:40:00.000+01:00Sorry, have run out of Monkey's Chuffs.But anyway,...Sorry, have run out of Monkey's Chuffs.<BR/><BR/>But anyway, just very impressed you can use "peddling" correctly. Have you any idea of how many novelists can't? Or do they all have the same editor who edits away the correct usage?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com