Re: RARA-AVIS: Re: RARA-AVIS The death of the hardboiled

From: Doug Bassett ( dj_bassett@yahoo.com)
Date: 20 May 2000


Haven't read any Pronzini's fiction, so I can't comment on that, but I have read some of his entries in a huge encyclopedia of Mystery fiction entitled the St. James Guide (I think). They're very well done -- Pronzini obviously knows the field well and can speak intelligently about it. (He has also contributed to the St. James Encylopedia of Western fiction, where he's equally interesting. Again, not sure of the title
-- read these in a library).

I agree, too, that he's an excellent editor.

Doesn't pay, in my opinion, to get overexcited about comments like the Pronzini one under discussion. Ain't nobody in the world exempt from making dumb comments, and that's all this is, a dumb comment. It's just Mr. Pronzini's bad luck to have his dumb comment immortalized in print for the rest of us to laugh at.

doug
--- Bob Toomey < btoomey@javanet.com> wrote:
>
> Don't think I'd call Pronzini a childish writer.
> Dull, maybe, but not
> childish. And some of his short stories are vaguely
> amusing.
>
> On the other hand, despite his questionable
> pronouncements on
> hardboiled, he has served very honorably as an
> editor of anthologies,
> doing good work in preserving stories that would
> otherwise have vanished
> without a trace.

===== Doug Bassett dj_bassett@yahoo.com

__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send instant messages & get email alerts with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com/

--
# To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 21 May 2000 EDT