It always is. I've never met a zealot yet who didn't find
humor either
inexplicable or subversive--maybe that's why she doesn't
like
Chandler--he laughs at nearly everything and everybody,
including
himself at one time or another.
>
< From her review, a reader would not get a sense that
Chandler is an
exciting writer - or one worth reading.>
That's the real danger, of course. A thinking reader will
read such a
review and begin to suspect that if she dislikes it that
much, it would
be interesting to see just what Chandler did to set her off
so. An
unthinking reader will see what she's written and believe
she's the
Gospel. Of course, an unthinking reader might not read the
New York
Review of Books--it has too little white space in it.
There's the fact, too, that such an august publisher as the
Library of
America would choose Chandler as its first subject from
so-called
"popular literature" to earn membership in this prestigious
set of
books. It is hard to believe that after all these years,
thousands of
words of appreciation by talented writers, stories and novels
that never
go out of print, doctoral dissertations that examine him,
that there is
someone in the world so befuddled that they DON'T believe
that Chandler
is important both as an American novelist as well as a kind
of cultural
icon who painted sociological portraits of Los Angeles.
It's probably even more confusing when you know that Oates is
an H. P.
Lovecraft admirer who has edited a new collection of his
work. Although
I admire Lovecraft myself, he's not in Chandler's league
either as a
stylist or as an intellect.
< a weak writer reviews a much greater one and entirely
misses the
point. >
I think something happens to a writer's brain when they
continually
hear praise and receive rewards for their work--they begin to
think
they're the last word on other writers. I've seen it often
enough to
worry it might happen to me.
-- ************************************** Robert E. Skinner, Director Xavier University of Louisiana Library 7325 Palmetto Street New Orleans, LA 70125 (504) 483-7303 (voice) (504) 485-7917 (FAX) e-mail: rskinner@mail.xula.edu ************************************** # # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/.