Big Up the P-List, yo!

[Carvill John]

I've been on and off this list for years now. It's a bit like smoking, which you're expected to give up eventually. Ach, lets face it, it's more like smoking dope, which we're expectd never even to take up, but  you get the point. A pleasurable habit which sometimes has its down sides, and which in any case your wife would rather you knock on the head for good. But, as possible Pynchon mate Bob Dylan said, in the course of his last truly great album 'Love & Theft' (the only Dylan album title to have included inverted commas in the title, how Pynchonian), "Sometimes someone wants you to give something up and, tears or not, it's too much to ask". 

What I really like about Paul's post, below, is that he says he's concurring with me - and he *is*, I think - his comments could just as easily be marshalled to make a case against me. Not that I had an argument to argue against in the first place.

But what I really mean is that I appreciate this forum for the opportunity it gives to a lot of multiply diverse people to discuss such a range of matters, either related to TRP or not. It doesn't get said often enough - and if it does it's by p-list stalwart and all-round Voltarian good egg Dave Monroe - but we would all, surely, be the poorer for the loss of this list. Which seems like small potatoes in the 'my latest pearl of wisdom' stakes; but which also means we would all be the poorer for the loss of each other, dunnit?

So - big up y'self, all merry p-lister folk. A-and, ask y'sel'.............



>
> I would very much concur with the above.
>
> IV is a pastiche combining the hardboiled detective story with the doper
> genre or flick. The author has to be selective, so that one form doesn't
> detract from the other. The detecive has to maintain his mental acuity a
> good deal of the time or what would be the point. On the other hand, what
> would be the 70s without a lot of drug participation and talk.
>
> Or, another way of looking at it, the hardboiled detective is a decendent
> of the pulps. Writers got paid by the word. so of course there is a lot of
> filler. But more importantly action packed writing has to be paced--slowed
> down in other words. The reason Marlow seems to be reaching for the rye so
> often is the same reason he keeps reaching for a lucky (or whatever he
> smokes)--that being to pace the action. Not to get him drunk, but to give
> the reader a chance to absorb the story at a manageable pace.
>
> Come to think of it, Doc reaches for a Kool almost as often as he reaches
> for a joint.
>
> P
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