Sunday, June 24, 2012

Marxist Noir

Very interesting interview with Alan Wald about the connections of American proletarian realism and hardboiled school of crime writing at the Crime Time website. Authors mentioned: Jim Thompson, Kenneth Fearing, Ed Lacy, Ira Wolfert, Albert Maltz etc.

4 comments:

Anders E said...

Ed Lacy really is interesting. Not only did his stories involve bigotry quite often, his SIN IN THEIR BLOOD is about a private enterprise that specializes in investigating suspected "communists" and then rather than revealing their findings, using whatever incriminating stuff for blackmail. It was originally published in 1952 right in the middle of McCarthyism so I really wonder how he got away with it at the time.

Juri said...

What publisher did it come from? Was it a small paperpback house? Maybe there was no one to read the manuscript before it was printed and no one bothered to look back.

Anders E said...

Sort of. It was published by Eton Books, an imprint of Avon.

http://jamesreasoner.blogspot.se/2007/04/sin-in-their-blood-ed-lacy.html

Juri said...

Seems like James didn't like it very much. But I can understand if it's heavyhanded, as he says, political propaganda can be quite tiresome.