[LMB] dick francis, was trashy books for guys

[sylvus tarn]

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Tzivia Adler wrote:
> i adore the fact that in the later books, frances researched all the roles 
> his heroes play.  painter, pilot, photographer... then he does a few 
> starring each type.  why waste research on just one book? :)  glass-blower, 
> not so much
>

I thought the ones about the painters were cool because they they were
so different, and, to my mind, exposed Francis' increasing
sophistication:  the first guy is pretty secure as an artist;  but the
second one essentially secures his goal by laying his soul bare to his
antagonist, a very cool and canny old woman (the bad guys were mostly
mcguffins to drive the plot:  the real contest is between the artist and
the old woman/scholar/govt official.)

Their painting techniques were quite different as well, not surprising
given that one worked in oils, the other acrylics.

But the one on glassblowing:  yeesh.  Awful.  Strictly speaking it
didn't sound as if the guy was even doing that much glass-blowing, more
sculptural, but as he was working hot glass, (and people call even what
I do, which is technically a warm-glass technique, blowing), so ok.
This one had the same problem that the photography one had, and to a
lesser extent the gemstone one, which is that the characters wandered
too far afield from their areas of expertise---semi-precious people (as
noted even in the novel itself!) don't touch diamonds.  The cretan
necklace is a completely different technique than the sculpting the
glass shop does.  The photography puzzles were all over the map.  I've
tried lots and lots and *lots* of media in my time, so it's not
that...just that I didn't get a sense of how these artists (or
businessmen, in the case of the stone dealer) moved from one category to
another.  It wasn't believable, I guess, cuz it really *does* take about
3 years to get decent at a medium, and if you try something once, either
you sorta-kinda succeed at best, or you keep at it, till you get halfway
decent.  These one-offs the characters managed clashed with that
expectation, I think.

And I just had a really hard time believing a hot glass piece would
explode, and the artist would know exactly when.  Break, yes.  But
shatter?  Mebbe so, but it struck me the way the wizard reacted when
some guy in a movie killed people by shooting nails out of a nail gun
across a room, or something.

sylvus tarn
http://rejiquar.com





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