>At the risk of sounding like a cantankerous
party-pooper, let me say
>that Macdonald cannot be credited with introducing
such a mindset of
>tolerance and compassion in hardboiled P.I. fiction.
The Archer of the
>first period had no such qualities - he was an
exagerated Marlowe, a
>hard and cynical, wisecracking tough guy.
Right. I don't think he can be solely credited with that,
either, which is
why I qualified my statement with "In some ways..." But his
popularity,
whether he was the first or not, makes his influence an awful
big stick.
And your comments on Archer's contemporaries, Dewey's Mac and
Gault's Brock
Callahan, are right on the money. At least Gault's books were
recently
(what? ten years ago?) reissued, but most of Thomas B.
Dewey's Macs (and
his other, lighter series, about married eye Pete Schofield)
haven't been
reprinted for years, and are, sadly, getting harder and
harder to find,
which is a real shame.
Maybe one of those British presses will re-issue them.
Somehow, I doubt
many American companies are interested. Not when they're too
busy promoting
Monica's Cookbook or Everything I Ever Needed to Know I
Learned From Eating
Chicken Soup on Mars.
I particularly enjoy some of the Mac books, sorta Archer
without much of
the psycho-drama. But, while I can intellectually and
critically admire
Dewey's stuff, it doesn't move me the way much of Macdonald's
did, even
though Dewey may have been a better writer. In other words,
as much as I'm
a fan of Macdonald, I'm also ambivalent as hell about his
work. Anyone else
out there have the same emotional response to Macdonald's
work? Or am I
just being a bigger weenie than usual?
>and it looks like this month's unofficial topic is
Ross
>Macdonald. He must have done something right to make
people talk so
>much.
I think one reason Macdonald always draws such a, not heated,
but, um,
vivid discussion, is that somehow, he did manage to touch
some folks
emotionally. I guess that's what he did right. And it's why
some folks are
uneasy about him, and at least why there's such varied
response to his work.
And I've got a paperback of MacShane's 1976 THE LIFE OF
RAYMOND CHANDLER,
too. But didn't MacShane revise, or write another, later,
biography of
Chandler? Or am I getting it confused with his THE SELECTED
LETTERS of
RAYMOND CHANDLER?
Kevin Smith
The Thrilling Detective Web Site
http://www.colba.net/~kvnsmith/thrillingdetective/
Now out: The February issue, with fiction from Robert Iles
and Leigh Brackett,
and Face the Face, our new contest for fans of paperback
eyes.! Yippy!
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