IdleRich

IdleRich
I bought what I hope is a fun book. A book of three Raymond Chandler stories.
I've recently ordered a book called The Deadly Percheron anyone know it? Some people I know recommended it very strongly indeed. Seems like it should be a noir kinda thing but weirder.
Doctor, I'm losing my mind. So begins John Franklin Bardins unconventional crime thriller in which a psychiatrist attempts to help his patient lead to a dead-end world of amnesia and social outcasts. The Deadly Percheron is a murder mystery, poignant love story, and an unsettling and hallucinatory voyage into memory, madness, and despair.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Seems to be quite obscure. Or was at one point at least.
In 1946, Bardin entered a period of intense creativity during which he wrote three crime novels that were relatively unsuccessful at first, one of them not even being published in America until the late 1960s, but which have since become well-regarded cult novels.[citation needed] He went on to write four more novels under the pen names Gregory Tree or Douglas Ashe; the writer Julian Symons, in his introduction to an omnibus collection of Bardin's first three works, called those later novels "slick, readable, unadventurous crime stories". Under his own name, Bardin also wrote three more novels, the first two of which Symons called, respectively, "an interesting but unsuccessful experiment" and "disastrously sentimental".[3]

His best-regarded works, The Deadly Percheron, The Last of Philip Banter and Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly experienced renewed interest in the 1970s when they were discovered by British readers. As Symons said of their reemergence:

Denis Healey was the guest of honour at a Crime Writers' Association dinner a few years ago, one of those years when he was no more than a shadow Minister, and so had time for criminal frivolity. In the course of his speech Mr. Healey showed a considerable, almost a dazzling, knowledge of crime fiction. It was an impressive performance, one nearly too much for some of the audience. People who write crime stories are often not great readers of them, feeling perhaps that anything they read will be inferior to what they have written. And when, near the end of his peroration, Mr. Healey picked out for special praise the crime novels of John Franklin Bardin, they looked at each other in astonishment. Who was John Franklin Bardin? One is safe in saying than no more than a dozen of the hundred and fifty people at dinner than night had ever heard of him.[3]
Symons, who compiled the omnibus, had difficulty tracking down information on Bardin. He was unable to find any American critic who had heard of him and even his original publishers and agents did not know how to contact him or even whether he was still alive. Symons wrote that Third Degree, the journal of Mystery Writers of America, found Bardin in Chicago, editing an American Bar Association magazine, and willing and eager to see his work republished.
The Deadly Percheron tells the story of a psychiatrist who encounters a patient with apparent delusions and a strange story to tell, but who does not otherwise exhibit signs of mental instability. His story turns out to have at least some connection to reality, drawing the psychiatrist into a complicated alternate identity that changes his life. The Last of Philip Banter sees a man receiving (or apparently writing) disturbing predictions about his life. The predictions partly become true, the effect of the predictions themselves being destructive and mind-altering.
Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly, perhaps his most acclaimed work,[citation needed] is a complicated story told almost entirely in terms of the psychology of the protagonist Ellen, a mental patient who experiences mental disintegration.
Bardin gave his literary influences as Graham Greene, Henry Green and Henry James.
Sounds really interesting to me anyway. And hopefully fun too. I wish the book would turn up.
 

borzoi

Well-known member
i couldn't get into chandler that much but i loved hammett's red harvest and jim thompson's pop. 1280. all the crime and noir stuff i've read from the 50s and 60s has been great actually. i always wonder if there's secretly some really interesting modern day airport fiction that will be reissued by nyrb in 50 years but i can't bother to find out. seems like if you're a great genre writer you'd just go into tv these days.
 

borzoi

Well-known member
computer games have been pretty bad at furthering their genres tho, bc the range of actions you can do is so limited. like whats the game equivalent of opening a pulp sci fi mag to find a philip k dick story? and the games that do try to push the boundaries somehow are usually just masturbatory or boring.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
There was an interesting term for a games ability to reconcile its gameplay with its narrative, and how that can make or break it in terms of immersion. Forget where I saw that though.

@borzoi I think theres a trend in film , specifically blockbusters and whatnot, where the protagonist is increasingly having their fanboy/fangirl aspects foregrounded, seeing as that is an identity aspect that viewers can often deeply relate to. How can that be expressed in video games, without it being vacuously recursive? (EG just playing games within games)
 

luka

Well-known member
computer games have been pretty bad at furthering their genres tho, bc the range of actions you can do is so limited. like whats the game equivalent of opening a pulp sci fi mag to find a philip k dick story? and the games that do try to push the boundaries somehow are usually just masturbatory or boring.

isn't that a good reason to want to write for them?
 

you

Well-known member
@borzoi I think theres a trend in film , specifically blockbusters and whatnot, where the protagonist is increasingly having their fanboy/fangirl aspects foregrounded, seeing as that is an identity aspect that viewers can often deeply relate to. How can that be expressed in video games, without it being vacuously recursive? (EG just playing games within games)

'fanboy/fangirl aspects foregrounded, because the industry regards these qualities of identity as appealing to viewers.' It's commercial, a race the bottom via trad caricature. I would not credit this symptom with any depth or empathy. In my experience this is what defines gamers' attitude - a apathy towards character drive, development. Just emo wall paper to work through between thrills.

I know someone who writes for a major games company (she's worked at a few). And daily she has to push back against the bros' want of having a femme to be saved/sacrificed by a Man who solves problems through violence.
 

you

Well-known member
And there's always the annoying shrug of 'hey, that's the genre' - so gangsters have to be big strong macho normative men fighting around weak women who's character stops at beauty. This, apart from being a bit DM-lazy-sexism, is the antithesis of so many successful takes within genre. In TV, Sopranos has Carmella opposite wobbly (emotionally and physically) Tony. The Wire too. The big players are miles away from the cheap character equivalent. Sensitive Studious Stringer, Lost McNulty, Ice Cold Snoop, Omar....
 

luka

Well-known member
There's been a big push back against that kind of knee jerk opposition to the ancient hallowed tropes. Which is somewhat reactionary but also a recognition of how trite it can feel. We have a strong kick ass female character. Our male hero is kinda tough, but... he's scared of the dark! These gestures can feel like sops to a shrill and permantly outraged bunch of harpies.
 

luka

Well-known member
One of the reasons I would like to write for computer games is I think it would be nice to work with stock characters without having to undermine and subvert them.
 

luka

Well-known member
I don't want, for instance, a Conan the Barbarian with asthma. Conan fills an emotional need, a wish fulfilment, a crude but satisfying fantasy for men who are neither barbarians nor mighty of hew nor invincible in combat and rarely drink in taverns with beautiful and fierce wenches hanging off them, all gooey eyed.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
There's been a big push back against that kind of knee jerk opposition to the ancient hallowed tropes. Which is somewhat reactionary but also a recognition of how trite it can feel. We have a strong kick ass female character. Our male hero is kinda tough, but... he's scared of the dark! These gestures can feel like sops to a shrill and permantly outraged bunch of harpies.

It starts out as a move to create depth and complexity and ends up being a socio-political checklist which actually runs against the grain of artistic creation.
 

luka

Well-known member
These audiences are well aware of how crude and regressive these wish fulfilliment fantasies are but that is what they want. Not all the time, but when they read Conan, they want Conan.
 

luka

Well-known member
It starts out as a move to create depth and complexity and ends up being a socio-political checklist which actually runs against the grain of artistic creation.

People know when they're having the piss taken out of them and being treated like dummies. And this mindset, oh you have to have a kick ass female character with a ninja sword who always wears a bikini, is taking the piss.
 

luka

Well-known member
Let's have a Star Wars where Luke doesn't destroy the Death Star. No! Let's not! Luke always destroys the Death Star!
 

craner

Beast of Burden
People know when they're having the piss taken out of them and being treated like dummies. And this mindset, oh you have to have a kick ass female character with a ninja sword who always wears a bikini, is taking the piss.

Which just feeds back into, or actually resurrects, or exacerbates, existing prejudices, rather than challenging or undermining them.
 
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