Honestly, I didn’t report it. I just ducked out. Since I seemed to be the only concerned party, I assumed the mods wouldn’t care.

I’m reading The Ax, by Donald Westlake, in preparation for watching No Other Choice. I’m really enjoying it so far. It’s nice anticapitalist goodness.

Yeah, it’s pretty bizarre. Regardless of the intended level of irony, it’s a very bad joke, in all senses of the word ‘bad’.

Yeah, it’s a bummer. Why must they come for everything we like?

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Yeah, I read that he was a nepo baby. Also, people say “But he dropped out of university to start Microsoft.”

He dropped out of fucking Harvard. His life was easy as piss from the get-go.

Yeah. He has shaped the world in very negative ways through his decisions. He could donate his entire fortune today and live out the rest of his life in a monastery, but I would still hate him.

Wonderful; thanks for sharing. I’ll check him out this weekend.

Very well put. I cannot stand the entitlement in the original letter.

Fair point. It’s not an excuse, but it does explain a lot. Nobody is the villain in their own story, after all.

I don’t know The Hated One; I’m assuming they are a content creator. What kind of stuff do they usually do?

Honestly, I wouldn’t put it past him.

That’s a good point, as illustrated by things like the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Well, it would make sense. Rich people have always creeped me out, just instinctively.

Yup. He stole a bunch of ideas and code, then got upset that people were stealing his ideas and code. Do as I say, not as I do.

I read about that, yeah. All hail Mammon; money above all. Sometimes I think wealth changes something in a person’s brain, like psychologically or neurologically. It’s as if they get so detached from reality that they lose all empathy and sense of community. I’ve heard the term ‘affluenza’ used as a joke, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense as a legitimate thing.

Wonderful; I’m glad you enjoy it so much. I’m looking forward to it immensely, but I’m also really enjoying my current book. It’s a weird feeling, loving the current one but also wanting to move on to the next one.

That’s a difficult question; I think Clevenger is easily the most out-there author in the list. However, I think you might have a good time with Jim Thompson, especially the books A Hell Of A Woman and After Dark, My Sweet. Both of them get pretty experimental and abstract right at the end. They are also just really fun reads in general.

You’re welcome. I hope you enjoy the new Clevenger. I have it on my e-reader, lined up for after I finish the new Jake Hinkson.

I actually read Baer first. I devoured the whole trilogy and tried to find similar stuff. I read somewhere online that he shares a fanbase with Clevenger, so I read Dermaphoria. I had a few false starts, because the first chapter is very abstract and confusing (by design, of course). But once I got properly into it, I couldn’t get enough. It’s a real shame that the film adaptation is so bad. I watched it with my mom, and I kept pausing to explain that the book does this part much better.

Chandler’s prose is fantastic. His books are very enjoyable for me. However, I would classify him as a hardboiled author, rather than noir (I know the distinction is contested, but I need some shorthand to describe my preferences). From Wikipedia:

Author and academic Megan Abbott described the two thus:

Hardboiled is distinct from noir, though they're often used interchangeably. The common argument is that hardboiled novels are an extension of the wild west and pioneer narratives of the 19th century. The wilderness becomes the city, and the hero is usually a somewhat fallen character, a detective or a cop. At the end, everything is a mess, people have died, but the hero has done the right thing or close to it, and order has, to a certain extent, been restored.

Noir is different. In noir, everyone is fallen, and right and wrong are not clearly defined and maybe not even attainable.