Re: Looking for new Authors
Maybe I am feeling argumentative tonite?
I just wrote a review of the Stephen Hunter Swagger book series. I am disappointed, actually purely disgusted with the scummy shit these authors work into the plots to pander sexually and degrade their readers.
I read No Country For Old Men, and The Road by Cormac McCarthy and got similar vibes.
Andrew Vachss is an attorney who was/is very proactive on defense of abused/molested children. His Burke series began with a hard hitting and gritty tone, a hood (BB Burke) and his crewe of underworld contacts stinging the dark denizens of pedophilia and other rotten types. In his later books, Vachss cannot seem to regain his earlier moral compass. He depicts Burke in many deeds of debauchery and spends a great deal of time on the elements of B&D and other perversions. At one point he decided to drop the Burke character altogether, and it was way past time.
Too many authors get a formula going. Robert Ludlum is an example. Vachss was too cutesy with what wonderful characters Burkes Blow buddies were. Should have all be napalmed at the back table of Mama's chink noodle parlor and NYC would've been the better for it. Except that wouldn't have gotten rid of the mole...
Anyway, I am tired of having to pretend that "good men" are all sexually depraved and that perversions are mere pecadillos. Yet, such is what the authors or publishers want to present.
In contemporary America, there is no effort to uplift or guide the citizenry in any direction but down into the gutter.
If you want to read anything of quality, you just about have to look to those works copyrighted before WW-I. CS Forester's Hornblower series and Tolkeins Trilogy being exceptions. Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer and Fleming's Bond books are less objectionable for the author's time of publication did not allow gross offense to be conveyed to the reader. They were not published by Evergreen afterall...
Stephen Hunter's Swagger books could have been stronger and worth praise, except for his mistaken opinion that contemporary fiction requires all men to be scum, weak, and with no morals or decency.
Vachss proved himself to me to be a pervert by his writing.
It is no accident that America is on the brink of collapse. Absence of morality and clear code of conduct will bring anyone to failure. Just realize it has not been done to US by accident.
If you really want to experience great literature, try the classics. Not much better than Les Miserables, Tom Jones, Tristam Shandy, Silas Marner, Henry V, The Merchant of Venice, King Lear, MacBeth...
