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franklekens 's review for:
Black Wings Has My Angel
by Elliott Chaze
Pitch perfect pulp fiction. I’m no connaisseur of 50s pulp, but from what I’ve read this seems to me equal to the best, with above average writing. It’s certainly on a par with Jim Thompson, with the added benefit that Chaze seems more conscious of the artificiality of 50s pulp clichés. Not by avoiding them so much as by revelling in them, laying them on and putting them to good use.
Compared to the lean style of 30s pulp like Horace McCoy’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? 50s pulp can sometimes sound rather melodramatic and childish in its insistence on violence and guns. At least that’s what I felt with authors like Thompson and Goodis. Chaze’s novel is no less melodramatic, but he seems to deploy the melodrama more consciously, and therefore more effectively. And as I said, the writing is really accomplished, and makes the book eminently quotable. Except that I find it hard to quote from it since I listened to the audio version... I don’t have a text to look up sentences that struck me.
Not ‘Great Literature’, but certainly riveting, entertaining and very well-written literature this is.
This was the first time I ‘read’ an audio book, and this 50s pulp style seems to lend itself particularly well to this type of consumption. Malcolm Hillgartner’s reading was very effective. It felt like listening to the voice-over of a 50s noir film. And that's exactly what it should sound like.
Compared to the lean style of 30s pulp like Horace McCoy’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? 50s pulp can sometimes sound rather melodramatic and childish in its insistence on violence and guns. At least that’s what I felt with authors like Thompson and Goodis. Chaze’s novel is no less melodramatic, but he seems to deploy the melodrama more consciously, and therefore more effectively. And as I said, the writing is really accomplished, and makes the book eminently quotable. Except that I find it hard to quote from it since I listened to the audio version... I don’t have a text to look up sentences that struck me.
Not ‘Great Literature’, but certainly riveting, entertaining and very well-written literature this is.
This was the first time I ‘read’ an audio book, and this 50s pulp style seems to lend itself particularly well to this type of consumption. Malcolm Hillgartner’s reading was very effective. It felt like listening to the voice-over of a 50s noir film. And that's exactly what it should sound like.