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Of Vampires and Drivers
18 October 2011 07:19 pmManaged to get hold of a copy of "The Laughing Corpse" by walking out to a branch library -- it does look as if I'll be able to track down all or most of the 'classic' Anita Blake books by trawling between various far-flung branches, even if they aren't so ubiquitous as the newer editions....
( Charlaine Harris - True Blood )
What initially hooked me on Anita Blake was not 'paranormal romance' (of which, at that stage, there wasn't any) but the vividness of the world-building, the wry Chandleresque world-view of the heroine, the visceral thrill of the action sequences and the good old-fashioned page-turning narrative: the actual plotline of "Guilty Pleasures", say, may not make that much sense in retrospect (and in fact so far as I recall the detective elements of a lot of the books don't), but every twist as it went along had me desperate to know what happened next. I'm afraid I don't get that out of Charlaine Harris. The Deep South trailer-park setting -- something of which I know virtually nothing, and which could be interesting -- is taken for granted and barely sketched in, while the vampire stuff feels derivative: a character even name-checks Anne Rice, which comes across less as post-modern reference than as a jarring breach of the fourth wall. I did, however, enjoy and appreciate the vampire-Elvis theory (and the way in which the name is never actually mentioned...)
Caught an unscheduled repeat of "The Betty Driver Story" on television yesterday evening: in her pre-Coronation Street career the young Betty had the female lead in the film "Let's Be Famous" in which Sonnie Hale played comic relief, as she describes in her autobiography (reading between the lines, Sonnie, a screen veteran who had been directing films himself only a few years previously, had little patience for the newcomer), and I had been told some material from this film might show up. It did: not only a number of clips from Betty's scenes, plus a a view of the publicity poster with Sonnie's name in large letters across it (clearly, he was still reckoned to be a box office draw), but an actual one-second clip in which he and Betty Driver had a scene together!
( Charlaine Harris - True Blood )
What initially hooked me on Anita Blake was not 'paranormal romance' (of which, at that stage, there wasn't any) but the vividness of the world-building, the wry Chandleresque world-view of the heroine, the visceral thrill of the action sequences and the good old-fashioned page-turning narrative: the actual plotline of "Guilty Pleasures", say, may not make that much sense in retrospect (and in fact so far as I recall the detective elements of a lot of the books don't), but every twist as it went along had me desperate to know what happened next. I'm afraid I don't get that out of Charlaine Harris. The Deep South trailer-park setting -- something of which I know virtually nothing, and which could be interesting -- is taken for granted and barely sketched in, while the vampire stuff feels derivative: a character even name-checks Anne Rice, which comes across less as post-modern reference than as a jarring breach of the fourth wall. I did, however, enjoy and appreciate the vampire-Elvis theory (and the way in which the name is never actually mentioned...)
Caught an unscheduled repeat of "The Betty Driver Story" on television yesterday evening: in her pre-Coronation Street career the young Betty had the female lead in the film "Let's Be Famous" in which Sonnie Hale played comic relief, as she describes in her autobiography (reading between the lines, Sonnie, a screen veteran who had been directing films himself only a few years previously, had little patience for the newcomer), and I had been told some material from this film might show up. It did: not only a number of clips from Betty's scenes, plus a a view of the publicity poster with Sonnie's name in large letters across it (clearly, he was still reckoned to be a box office draw), but an actual one-second clip in which he and Betty Driver had a scene together!