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THUNDER

       
                                  February 26, 2004

                                     
        "Why can't I say it straight out?  Why do all 
        of us (you too!) pretend we think honest 
        feelings are infra dig?  In the nineteen-twenties,
        when I was still young, a lot of people in the         
        theatre began jeering that all the old plays 
        were funny.  If you took a part with real guts 
        in it, if you cut loose and gave it the works, 
        they said you were funny too.  They tried to 
        scare you with the word 'ham.'  And why? 
        Because they couldn't do a part with guts in 
        it, so they know they'd better not try.
                                     
        "The theatre's changed now, thank God.  Or at 
        least it's changing.  Even then I thought,  
        'To hell with this mealy-mouthed stuff.  Play 
        it in the grand manner or don't play it at all. 
        If a line's difficult, show you know your job 
        by getting away with it ... "
                                     
                        "Desmond Ferrier", in John Dickson Carr's 
                        _In Spite of Thunder_, p. 148
                        (c. 1960, set in 1956)
                          
     
  Carr frequently expounded on subjects   
  like this inside of his fiction; he was 
  a defender of the tale of blood and                  
  thunder, and had many an unkind word for       I sometimes wonder       
  effette intellectual pretensions.              though how he would           
                                                 feel about this    
  Russian novelists in                           issue today...     
  particular get rough       RUSSIAN_PLOT
  treatement at his hands.                             The public has if
                                                       anything even        
  The above exposition reflects what is                less patience for 
  really good about Carr:  if you're going             intellectual         
  to do it, do it like you mean it.                    affectation than  
  Don't wink at the audience about how                 ever before.        
  silly it all really is, take it seriously,                            
  do your best to "get away with it".                  They want action,  
                                                       fight scenes, 
     And Carr certainly                                fart jokes,        
     could get away with it...                         special effects,   
                                  CASTLE_SKULL         and plenty of naked 
     Note that Carr was a man                          breasts, (or things 
     who knew something about                          that sort of look  
     the 1920s (that was when he                       like them).        
     started writing):                                                    
                                                    In comparison, Carr's 
     Interesting that the irony                     version of fiction    
     vs. sincerity war has been                     with guts in it is       
     going on this long...                          remarkably civilized  
                                                    and restrained, full  
   But then, even those                             of references to        
   terrible Russian                                 obscure technical       
   novelists had                                    literature about      
   something to say                                 poisons, histories of 
   about it:                                        London in the 1600s,  
                                                    esoterica about          
    "He spoke involuntarily in his                  medieval Satan             
     habitual half-bantering tone                   worshippers and so on.
     which seemed to make fun of                                  
     those who said such things               BOOKSHELF_OF_JOHN_DICKSON_CARR 
     seriously; and in that tone                                          
     it was impossible to say what                        Be careful what    
     had to be said to her."                              you ask for...       
                                                                               
          ANNA_KARENINA  (1878)         
          part II, Ch XI, p135               
          (Karenin speaking to Anna)         
 
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