Re: RARA-AVIS: Paen to MacDonald

From: Etienne Borgers ( freeweb@rocketmail.com)
Date: 01 May 2000


--- James Rogers < jetan@ionet.net> wrote:
>
> OPUTRAGEOUSLY SNIPPED

> On a lower class note, I would like to sing the
> praises of John D.
> McDonald. As a youth, I sort of fit all of his stuff
> into the catagory of
> Travis McGee, which is not bad but which suffers
> from the vices that
> afflict series fiction in general.

> > simply shocking. His bitter psychological
insight
> makes Ross McDonald seem
> like a guest on the Oprah show. His acute eye for
> social class outstrips
> Chandler, no small feat, and reminds one of the best
> of John O'Hara. At his
> own best, he strikes me as vastly better than an
> over-rated literateuer
> like Simenon.
> I really mean all this crap, and I don't think I
> am just puffing the
> guy. Don't we have any stone-cold MacDonald fans on
> the list? And does
> anyone know how a Harvard grad came to crank out
> cheap paperback originals?
>

I, and many other from the list, will agree about your praise of John D, especially for his non- Travis novels. I even teared at least two keyboards in trying to convince by Internet ways that the earlier novels of John D are superior to the other Mc Donald. Ross is the one that was artificially put on the top of HB/Noir writers... He's only a very average writer, that could fit only the second level of the hall of fame

And unfortunately the present general public recognition of John D was done based on the wrong novels (Travis)

Look into RA archives and you will find intersting earlier discussions about this point.

Keep reading John D. older works!

E.Borgers Hard-Boiled Mysteries http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6384

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