Nearly nothing but novels: book reviews of fiction and crime fiction: Dr. Criminale, Malcolm Bradbury, Gary Disher; see the Autralian post below

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Dr. Criminale, Malcolm Bradbury, Gary Disher; see the Autralian post below

An excerpt from Crime Down Under is found just down under this post. I have yet to write on Gary Disher and it weighs heavy on my soul, especially with an Australian mother and so many relatives there. Hence the link to a good source. I have read these two and highly recommend them: The Dragon Man and Kittyhawk Down

So now I have this HTML/javascript problem: white rectangles show at the end of each post in IE but don't show in Firefox (but other things don't show in Firefox either, like the stat counter # and some pictures). I suppose is partly an Amazon script thing (actually Google, I now believe). I wanted to start with Booksense to support local bookstores but I'm not in the mood to add more javascript at the moment.

In lieu of a proper review of Dr. Criminale by Malcolm Bradbury, I offer my response to a comment found on the blog by Elizabeth Baines and her reading group (they have quite a lot of discussions about literature; you may enjoy them as I did).

"Sorry but I think your group missed the boat. First, Eastern Europe Constantly juxtaposed inappropriate bedfellows, like the poets in prison, and the poets not in prison but who maybe once were or will be again, so this switching of tone that bothered you (and I know that inappropriate tone can bother me, too) was actually an accurate and important part of the setting. Life in Eastern Europe in those days should bother us! Second, if you read Djinn by Alain Robbe-Grillet and other books of this genre (or maybe you have, sorry), you will recognize that the lack of resolution regarding the good Doctor is exactly postmodern, not a post-modern joke. So, what Bradbury did was (attempt to) inform us all about postmodernism with the help of humor and satire, and simultaneously write a perfect postmodern novel. I don't see this as one trick at all! I see it as a brilliant fusion of the text on literary theory with (the) question of whether text exists at all and if any text can be true without having an infinite number of truths (one for each reader, because we are all authors of our own texts which happen to inhabit the covers of a single book). Or some-thing like that. Or am I confusing deconstruction / post-structuralism and postmodernism here? I sort forget (but I just looked it up- I'm cool!), but at the time I read Dr. C, maybe 10 years ago, or whenever it first came out, it was all very clear. Thanks for posting on a favorite author of mine! Tried Rates of Exchange yet? Brilliant! Jim"

Added after the fact, on 9/12/07: via direct communication, it seems that Elizabeth and I are in agreement about nearly everything.

Comments are always appreciated, favorable or otherwise.