From another thread:
I can see why Swag & Get Shorty are so much loved. Swag is a funny, gentle story about ordinary armed-robbers, full of good scenes, great gags, high on irony; Get Shorty a brilliant postmodernist Russian doll of a book, a metafiction, technically dazzling.
But Glitz isn’t about irony or technical brilliance. Glitz has that one thing that very few of Elmore’s stories have. It has a seriousness of purpose.
Take the bad guy. Teddy Magyk isn’t one of Elmore’s wacky villains, laugh at him or with him, he’s still good fun. Teddy isn’t any fun at all, he’s bad all the way through. He himself thinks he’s funny, but that only makes him worse. If one of his lines makes you laugh, you like feel guilty aisn’t any fun at all,bout it afterwards because it’s so creepy. As I claim in another thread on this forum, there are two great portraits of sociopaths in 20th century writing; Teddy, & Meursault in L’Etranger; Glitz is the better book, I’m sure of it, even though The Stranger or The Outsider gets sold as a ‘Modern Classic’..
All this is true. Now, I’m wondering about Robin from Freaky Deaky. She may also be a great portrait of a 20th century sociopath - and there haven’t been many female sociopaths in books (although there are plenty of real life models to base them on). Robin also, “isn’t any fun at all,” she’s, “bad all the way through.” Freaky Deaky may also be a book with serious intent, but played a little lighter, more deceptively serious, but looking at all the characters, the would-be radicals, the Black Panthers, the current drug dealers and the burn-outs, Skip and Woody and Chris Mankowski the Vietnam Vet and even Greta Wyatt, there’s a lot going on.