Sartre, Camus and Ken Bruen

Hey, I didn't say it; Declan Burke did, and he just might be on to something. Here's part of what he had to say about Bruen's character Jack Taylor in a recent interview with the Sons of Spade:

"In [Taylor’s] world, everyone is equally culpable, and Bruen has inverted the focus of his PI’s gaze so that it’s himself he’s investigating, his morality, the part that he plays in creating the kind of world where good, bad and indifferent all jostle for pre-eminence. What Bruen is doing for crime fiction right now is akin to what Camus and Sartre, in their different ways, did for philosophy sixty or seventy years ago – although a more appropriate, Irish, reference would be that of Samuel Beckett."

What I find interesting is that Burke's comments distance Jack Taylor from the ranks of middle-aged loner P.I.s, a group about which I have commented from time to time and to which I now realize that Taylor's resemblance may be merely superficial.

Paris, city of crime: The end. I arrived back in Philadelphia yesterday, a day ahead of my luggage. I can't tell you how good it is to be home from Paris and ready to go back to work. Actually, I could, but it would make unpleasant telling and dreary reading.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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