Lee K. Abbott’s “Love Is The Crooked Thing” contains anything that your typical Western story would have. It has your “tough hombres” like Doctor Leroy Toolchin, who, according to La Duc A.K.A. Duke, the speaker, had a face that said “Citizens, be still. My profession is violent but I will be gone shortly” as he awe-strikingly bore witness to the Doc rob the town safe box, as seen on page 142. The good doctor would later offer Duke, after giving him that nickname, as “number two in [the Doc’s] outfit” on page 145. With “tough hombres” and gangs of outlaws, “Love Is The Crooked Thing” sounds like it would be classified under the Western genre.
Daniel Chandler, in the “The Problem of Definition” section of his writing “An Introduction to Genre Theory”, states that “…in the case of films, some seem to be aligned with one genre in content and another genre in form.”. While “Love Is The Crooked Thing” is not a film, I believe this statement applies to this story. While the content is that of a Western, the form, in some instances, can have some atypical dialogue to that of a Western. An example of this is when the Doc, on page 147, speaks about his intellect in saying: “I know quotes from Utillo and Sange… a little about the planets, namely Mars.” In the grand spectrum of things, the character of the Doc contradicts the archetype of the gun-toting, hot-tempered, quick to kill, criminals. The Doc seems to be a very, cool, collected, intellectual man, as if he were a villain from sort of espionages story, clearly a transcendence from the typical Western criminal.
Chandler, in his essay, “An Introduction to Genre Theory”, is trying to explain how genres aren’t so cut and dry, but there are many different barriers that genres set up that the media tends to defy. “Love Is The Crooked Thing” defies the traditional boundaries of the typical Western medium mostly through it’s viewpoint of the typical “bad guys” that rob banks and threaten people, albeit these “baddies” are stoic in comparison to the gun-crazy, sheriff killing archetypes of Western media.
2 comments:
I agree with Mike in the fact that the characters "Love is the Crooked Thing" do not fall into the stereotypical 'western' mold. The Doc is indeed too cold and calculating, and would seem to be, as Mike said, more at home in a spy flick.
I also agree with Mike that Doc seems to be out of place and context in this story of a western because he is so educated and well spoken with a very eloquent demeanor, not at all what you would picture from the leader of an outlaw gang. However,I want make sure I am on the same page,isn't the story called "The Purpose of this Creature Man?"
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