Well, like I said, given Milo and C.W.'s taste for pills,
booze, coke, and
other goodies, maybe this (seemingly) pointless wandering is
intentional.
But I felt the tempo was definitely flawed.
Crumley's attempts to meld the road novel with the hardboiled
novel:
sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I thought
Bordersnakes meandered
a bit too much. Just me, though. Oh, and sorry about that
kiss. It really
was wrong. You're right, I meant Case.
And, Lulu, I don't think it's so much the praise of Macdonald
or Leonard or
anyone I was talking about, it's the kneejerk, out-of-context
over-the-top
acceptance of that praise by people who haven't even read the
books, and
the inevitable backlash when the next book on the racks
doesn't meet
(inflated) standards.Don't get me wrong, guys. I like
Crumley! I like
Macdonald! I like Leonard! Heck, I even like Lulu! I do! I
do!
Unfortunately, the publishers boiled a pretty lengthy (and
pretty fair, if
I remember correctly) review down to a few words, and
plastered it all over
Macdonald's books for the next twenty or thirty years, and
now everyone
pretty much accepts Macdonald as number three on the hit
parade, right
behind Hammett and Chandler, and that the Archer books are
the "finest
(detective) series ever written by an American." A
conspiracy? Maybe by
blurb writers, lazy critics and bandwagon jumpers.
And here's some more nonsense, for your consideration: Just
how American
was Macdonald, anyway? He's said he was always an uneasy
American, carrying
the burden of a spiritual dual citizenship. He felt he could
never escape
his Canadian past, that he always felt like an outsider in
California, and
that he expected Canada to "overtake me before I die,
reminding me with its
chill and weight that I belong to the north after all."
This
detective/writer as an outsider seems to be a recurring theme
that just
won't let go, not just in the case of Archer/Macdonald, but
also
Marlowe/Chandler, caught between Britain and the States, and
all the way
through the genre.
So, the question: who does the story better: the outsider, or
the insider?
Or the insider who thinks like an outsider? Feel free to
discuss this among
yourselves.
P.S. Is anyone else getting a lot of useless HTML code in
some messages?
It's e-mail; let's not get too fancy here. Save the
formatting for another
time.
But I digress...
Kevin Smith
Web Guy for The Thrilling Detective Web Site
For info, mailto:kvnsmith@total.net
"Everybody loves a loser,
They wanna see him pay his dues,
Everybody loves a loser,
But they don't wanna stand in his shoes."
-Murray McLauchlan
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