Could the high quality of Hammett's pulp stories have
anything to do with his sparse production? Sparse relative to
writing machines like Erle Stanley Gardner and Max Brand,
that is.
I notice that Whitfield, another first-rate writer, was not
especially prolific. And of course, neither was
Chandler.
I was thinking about this while rereading top-second-drawer
writers like Nebel, Carroll John Daly and Robert Leslie
Bellem. While all three had obvious natural talent as
storytellers, you can see that commercialism and formulae got
the better of them.
The real mystery is Fredric Brown, in whom quality was not
impaired by quantity.
Regards,
MrT
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