From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph@EARTHLINK.NET>
Subject: Re: (urth) The genres of PEACE
Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 21:29:42 

Michael Andre-Driussi wrote:
> 
> >Part four is a hardbooiled detective story.  We have a crime being
> >investigated (forgery) and an alluring but treacherous woman whom the
> >"detective" gets entangled with.  The bogus treasure is out of THE
> >MALTESE FALCON, and Gold's dusty bookshop is out of THE BIG SLEEP.  Weer
> >even compares himself to "Humphrey Bogart or Charlie Chan." (213)
> 
> That part is especially good, Adam.

Thanks.  I actually got the part four-detective story connection first,
and that encouraged me to go after the others.

> (Although technically: wasn't the
> bookshop in THE BIG SLEEP more an open, uncluttered, false front for
> something else?

Well, I was seeing the bookshop as just an allusion, not evidence for
any real parallelism with THE BIG SLEEP (although the decrepit Blaine,
with his "proud, cold eyes (184) does put me in mind of General (?)
Sternwood).  It's actually been a long time since I either read or saw
THE BIG SLEEP.

One thing I didn't mention in my original post was that my list of
genres was surprisingly cinematic.  "Screwball comedy" is really a film
genre, and part four owes as much to film noir, it seems to me, as to
written detective stories.  And parts three and five could also easily
be films.  Surprisingly, because there are almost no explicit references
to films, although there is that unexplained projector and can of film
in his memory office.  (Any other references aside from the Bogart
mention I quoted above?)

--Adam

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