Comments on: The PI Novel After Spillane http://davidthayer.booksquare.com/archives/2006/07/24/460/ One more bite of the apple. Tue, 07 Oct 2008 07:44:11 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 By: david i http://davidthayer.booksquare.com/archives/2006/07/24/460/#comment-7207 david i Mon, 24 Jul 2006 18:17:01 +0000 http://davidthayer.booksquare.com/archives/2006/07/24/460/#comment-7207 Lawrence Block on Spillane's narrative technique (from an old Block essay on the craft of transition): ---------------------- If, on the other hand, you want to stress action and pace, you might prefer to make your transitions as abrupt as possible. No one does this better than Mickey Spillane. His detective, Mike Hammer, never spends any time getting from one scene to another. In one sentence he’s stuffing some chap’s head in a men’s room toilet; a sentence later he’s clear across town shooting a girl in the stomach. He may waste time now and then at lovemaking or thinking aloud but he never wastes it getting from place to place, from one piece of action to another. Spillane started out writing comic books, and I think that’s where he learned to make fast cuts. While I’d personally read the label on the little bottle of Worchestershire sauce than check out Mike Hammer’s adventures, there’s no getting around the fact that Spillane, especially in his early books, had an immediacy and a gut instinct for the dramatic that won him a large and genuinely loyal readership, and there’s a little more to his success than sex and sadism. ------------------------ Lawrence Block on Spillane’s narrative technique (from an old Block essay on the craft of transition):
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If, on the other hand, you want to stress action and pace, you might prefer to make your transitions as abrupt as possible. No one does this better than Mickey Spillane. His detective, Mike Hammer, never spends any time getting from one scene to another. In one sentence he’s stuffing some chap’s head in a men’s room toilet; a sentence later he’s clear across town shooting a girl in the stomach. He may waste time now and then at lovemaking or thinking aloud but he never wastes it getting from place to place, from one piece of action to another.

Spillane started out writing comic books, and I think that’s where he learned to make fast cuts. While I’d personally read the label on the little bottle of Worchestershire sauce than check out Mike Hammer’s adventures, there’s no getting around the fact that Spillane, especially in his early books, had an immediacy and a gut instinct for the dramatic that won him a large and genuinely loyal readership, and there’s a little more to his success than sex and sadism.
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]]> By: Steve Clackson http://davidthayer.booksquare.com/archives/2006/07/24/460/#comment-7201 Steve Clackson Mon, 24 Jul 2006 17:37:31 +0000 http://davidthayer.booksquare.com/archives/2006/07/24/460/#comment-7201 Is this a cyclical thing? I think it is....and it's reflected in the T.V. shows and movies as well. Now we have the CSI's, Crossing Jordan etc. we have moved to the end of the case. Before we had the case itself and the P.I. was needed to solve it. Rember all the great T.V. P.I.'s. Marlowe, Mannix, Rockford, Magnum....now it's in the details not the case and sometimes not even the villian. Let's hope the P.I. comeback is sooner rather than later. Is this a cyclical thing?

I think it is….and it’s reflected in the T.V. shows and movies as well.
Now we have the CSI’s, Crossing Jordan etc. we have moved to the end of the case. Before we had the case itself and the P.I. was needed to solve it. Rember all the great T.V. P.I.’s.

Marlowe, Mannix, Rockford, Magnum….now it’s in the details not the case and sometimes not even the villian.

Let’s hope the P.I. comeback is sooner rather than later.

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