From: djheydt@kithrup.com   
      
   In article ,   
   William Vetter   wrote:   
   >Dorothy J Heydt has brought this to us :   
   >> In article <1lvubqe.xjjz8wstn6qcN%mbottorff@lshelby.com>,   
   >> Michelle Bottorff  wrote:   
   >>> Dorothy J Heydt  wrote:   
   >>>   
   >>>> Lawrence Block, who back in the day wrote lots of whodunits and   
   >>>> also wrote a monthly essay for one of the writers' magazines on   
   >>>> how to write fiction (generally, everything else in the book was   
   >>>> about how to write nonfiction and how to sell it to the editor   
   >>>> before you had written it).  One of his essays was titled "Let's   
   >>>> Hear It for Sex and Violence!"  He gave a couple of sample   
   >>>> paragraphs full of sex and violence, and then said, "You'd go on   
   >>>> reading, wouldn't you?"  No, I wouldn't.   
   >>>   
   >>> I probably wouldn't have either.   
   >>>   
   >>> I read a Lawrence Block book once, and I did actually finish it, but I   
   >>> didn't pick up any more Lawrence Block books, because I prefer my   
   >>> mysteries not to have utterly pointless sex scenes inserted in them.   
   >>>   
   >> Yeah, well, Block (as he admitted from time to time) kept beans   
   >> on the table till he hit his stride, by writing soft porn thinly   
   >> disguised as case-histories, by "[Various Pseudonyms], M.D."  He   
   >> seems to have gone on thinking, perhaps unto the present day,*   
   >> that if nobody gets bonked or beaten up in a chapter the reader   
   >> will not buy it.   
   >>   
   >Look at it this way:   
   >   
   >If you buy a DVD that says Slant Eye for the Straight Guy on the cover,   
   >you have certain expectations about what you're going to see.   
   >If you buy a book that says Lawrence Block on the cover, you have   
   >certain expectations.   
      
   Once you've already read a few of them, yes.  I once owned the   
   complete run of Tanner Stories and Burglar stories.  I don't any   
   more, sold 'em to make room in the bookshelves, but they weren't   
   that bad.  His third long-running series, about Matthew Scudder   
   the perpetually remorseful cop, I never read at all; they didn't   
   sound like my kind of book.  I don't know about their sex   
   content, but I got the impression there was a whole lot of   
   violence.   
      
   Since we're still talking about Block, he also wrote (or rather,   
   tried to write) a sort of SF novel.  It was called _Random Walk._   
   Don't attempt to read it.  It alternates chapters between   
   following a random group of people who for some reason unknown to   
   themselves start walking across the United States, with following   
   a psychopath who enjoys torturing, raping, and murdering random   
   women, not necessarily in that order.  Eventually he meets up   
   with the wanderers and *I forget what happens.*  I think the   
   psychopath gets killed or arrested or something, but I have the   
   definite impression that the reason the wanderers are wandering   
   is never satisfactorily explained.   
      
   But I assume Block still thought that if he wanted to write a   
   weird novel about people wandering, they know not why, it   
   wouldn't sell unless he interleaved it with an equal amount of   
   sex and violence.  Gah.   
      
   --   
   Dorothy J. Heydt   
   Vallejo, California   
   djheydt at gmail dot com   
   Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the gmail edress.   
   Kithrup's all spammy and hotmail's been hacked.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)