Front Lines Strange World Of Thomas Harris [Paperback]

This short book was featured in the Observer (a UK Sunday Newspaper) Literary Supplement in August 2001. In substance it's little more than an extended lit crit essay, with a bit of speculative history thrown in (as the author reminds us time and again, Harris talks to no man, and he is no exception).

By and large this work does what Sexton wants it to - that is, to open the reader's eyes to a deeper, more sophisticated Thomas Harris than one might expect from the melodramatic (Sexton's term) serial thriller genre that Harris seems happy to sit in. Sexton certainly succeeds in that and the strands he draws out of Poe, Stoker, Conan Doyle are fascinating, if not totally compelling.

BUT ... having said that, Sexton's range of references is pretty eclectic - in its literary tradition, Hannibal apparently derives from the three said potboilers and - um - Baudelaire!! (and the inevitable dash if Nietzsche, if I recall) but no-one else. Some of the links to these antecedents are pretty tenuous, which makes you wonder exactly how much homework Sexton did do - what, for example, might he have discovered if he'd done a compare and contrast on the Marquis de Sade as well? Or the Brothers Grimm? He makes great reference to the "Hannotations" website, where some poor obsessive has gone through Harris' latest (Hannibal) line by line uncovering obscure and extraordinary cross references in the text. This may be a worthwhile enterprise (after all, Harris spent ten years writing the book, so maybe he did concentrate on the text at this level) but I doubt it. Rather surprisingly there's not much in Sexton's book which doesn't appear on the web site - read from that what you will about the depth of Sexton's research.

Sexton's fervent defence of Harris against all comers - especially in re Hannibal - smacks of untempered adulation: Having heard him out, I'm still not convinced that Hannibal wasn't the flat out clunker its many detractors suggest. Harris may be a literary genius - but on the same evidence may just be a mildly sociopathic saddo - and Sexton's arguments for the former aren't especially persuasive.

Finally, Sexton's suggestion that Harris is the only decent writer of gothic melodrama (or any other popular fiction today, for that matter) is just silly - it leads one to wonder whether Sexton's shallow research isn't simply matched by the breadth of his holiday reading.

As the other reviewers here have suggested, those who come to this book looking for a lot of hard psychological information on Thomas Harris the man, will be disappointed. However, it can serve as a source of miscellaneous information on Harris's novels for those looking to be 'completists', as some of the information presented here does not appear in the other widely available print publications (such as the books 'Making Murder' and 'The Hannibal Files').

This small volume is drawn up in ten chapters, and covers the four novels (in order of publication) up through 'Hannibal'. Chapter 1, the introduction, consists of 10 pages. It gives a little information on the character, Hannibal Lecter. The success of Harris's novels is reviewed, along with that of their various 'copycats' (in both literature and film, an example of the latter being TV's 'The X-Files'). In Chapter 2 (7 pages), called "No Interviews", the author places what he considers to be Harris's apparent feeling about journalists within the context of the negatively-depicted and ill-fated Red Dragon character, Freddy Lounds. Chapter 3 (22 pages) goes over biographical information about Harris including what is known about his childhood.

Chapter 4 (9 pages in length) is about Harris's 1975 novel, Black Sunday. It reviews the plot line of the novel, and how some of Harris's later themes are evident in this his first novel. Chapter 5 (21 pages long) is called "Serial Killers and Red Dragon". To quote Sexton, "There are several new departures for crime fiction in 'Red Dragon'" This chapter includes information on Harris's study of workers and methods at the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico, Virginia. Chapter 6, "Dr. Lecter" (22 pages) is somewhat of a search for the 'real person/people' that the character Hannibal Lecter is based on. It turns out that "Lecter's true antecedents are...to be found...in fable and fiction." Sexton mentions Poe and Conan Doyle as literary influences. Chapter 7, "The Silence of the Lambs" is 18 pages in length. This is the novel which, of the four from Harris, Sexton seems the most impressed with. He mentions Harris's use of strong women characters, and goes over what he considers to be some underlying themes of the novel.

Chapter 8 (15 pages) goes over what is known about Harris's current life and lifestyle. Chapter 9 (22 pages) goes over Harris's fourth novel, 'Hannibal'. Sexton seems quite impressed by it, though he points out that it was panned by many critics and Harris fans. Chapter 10 is a brief 6 pages in which the author places Thomas Harris in terms of genre.

› Go to Amazon U.S. to see both reviews  2.5 out of 5 stars