31/12/2013

Here's To The New Year

I wish you all a happy new year. May 2014 be a good one for you and yours. This ending year was extremely still on this blog, let's hope the next one sees more activity. (Finally overcoming my reader's block is my good resolution for the new year, and with God's help I'll carry it out.) 

04/10/2013

Briefly Interrupting the White Noise

This blog has been fairly inactive for the last nine months, except for a short article in French. Some of you have been kind enough to inquire after my health and whereabouts; let them be thanked here. The reason for my silence is quite simple: I have nothing to say. I've been fighting depression for one year and a half and it's taken its toll on my intellectual activity, resulting in a worsening of my reader's block (I have only read four books in 2013, only one being a mystery) and a general difficulty to put ideas together, especially in a foreign language. Also, more knowledgeable and articulate blogs have emerged that say what little I say better than I ever would.

Now I hope it's just temporary and I'll be soon back in business. I miss sharing my thoughts with my few but dedicated readers.

02/06/2013

Attentes

François Guérif:

"Un auteur scandinave, un tueur en série, une description complaisante de la violence ne font pas un bon polar. Il faut du style et encore du style, ‘‘même sans véritable » histoire » [Un bon roman noir]  c’est une histoire qui va vous surprendre, vous déstabiliser, vous secouer, vous apporter quelque chose sur la société dans laquelle nous vivons."

Et je comprends tout à coup pourquoi tant de livres de chez Rivages me laissent froid, ou me donnent l'impression de s'être trompés de collection. J'apprécie bien entendu qu'un livre soit "bien écrit" et un arrière-plan social peut être un plus, mais ce n'est pas ce que j'attends en premier d'un roman policier/noir/criminel. Si je veux du style et de la portée sociale et rien que cela, autant lire de la littérature dite générale. Non, ce que je veux moi, c'est de l'originalité, de l'imagination (le roman policier est une littérature de l'imaginaire, au même titre que la S.F. ou le fantastique) de l'ingéniosité, des personnages et une ambiance intéressants et - nous y venons - une bonne histoire. Pour le reste, je suis ouvert à tout; c'est ce qui me permet d'apprécier aussi bien John Dickson Carr que Thomas H. Cook. 








12/01/2013

To Die For? Really?

I haven't much to add to Patrick's review of Declan Burke and John Connolly's Books to Die For. I felt the same way overall about the book, liking the same essays and being frustrated at the bias and shortsightedness. What bothered me most is how predictable the whole thing is. There was a time when crime writers were genuinely knowledgeable about the genre they practiced and thought a lot about it, but that time appears to be over. Most of the entries in this collection are usual suspects and offer nothing new in the way of analysis and commentary: with few exceptions contributors typically select the kind of book they write themselves (that Ian Rankin or Jon Lansdale are respectively fond of Derek Raymond and Raymond Chandler will come to no one's surprise) and their rationales are pretty expected. Another recurring trait is the kind of binary thought that mystery criticism shares with rock writing: Before X, things were dire. After X it's all great. James Sallis for instance thinks that French crime fiction prior to the advent of Jean-Patrick Manchette was all about police procedurals and picturesque Pigalle mobsters. To his credit, he is merely echoeing the vulgate predominent in the French fandom - yet he is wrong. French crime fiction was arguably more diverse before Manchette than it has been ever since. (What I have just written would sound like blasphemy to most French crime buffs, but I stand by it.) 
In short, Books to Die For is fine if you want to know more about your favorite writers's tastes (and prejudices) but only so-so if you care for the genre, its history and its milestones. Some might say that's the whole point.

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