A few weeks ago I commented on Point Blank – the brilliant film that stars Lee Marvin and features some of the most delightful asskicking ever set to the screen. Yet as great as John Boorman's adaptation is, the source material reigns even more superior. Richard Stark’s The Hunter is one of the most violent, hardboiled novels ever published. It goes by delightfully fast. The writing is so punchy you can feel the protagonist (if you can call him that) actually bruising you throughout the experience.
Stark is an alter ego of the comic crime idol Donald Westlake. His main character of the Stark series is Parker – an inimitable cold-hearted criminal who will lie, cheat and kill any cop, robber and all the poor souls in between. Beyond narrative, which is firmly entrenched in noir motifs, The Hunter is a firm, unwavering study in process and mechanics. The bare minimum revealed at all points. It’s naked text. Literary flourishes are decimated.
Microphone check:
He came across the room. Mal fell into the chair, he and the chair together to the floor, and now the woman sat up, bewildered, not yet frightened, blinking at him. She raised an arm to cover her breasts.Mal was comical, a slapstick comedian, the way he got himself all tangled up in the chair and the dressing gown. His arms flailed around, searching for the pocket where the gun was. Parker came over to him and kicked the chair out of the way, and Mal came up at last with the gun in his hand, his face still slack but his movements jerkily fast, as though he were operated by strings.Mal came up and around with the gun in his sweaty hand, but Parker reached out and took hold of the barrel and slipped the gun right out of his hand. And the metal of the butt showed darker and gleaming from his sweat.
Beside the pure excitement of this situation, the mechanics are notably bare. Like chess pieces, each move is definitive and deliberate. There's no long diatribes about hotel decor or emotional reactions. There's barely even a buildup, as the narrative returns to this moment from a flashback. It's pure process. Parker needs revenge. Parker gets revenge. Mal has no chance. Lots of the academics or New York Times types could learn a little something about writing from my man Richard Stark.
