>
>Chandler's story sense is rather juvenile --
especially compared with later
>mystery writers like Jim Thompson and James Ellroy --
but this rarely
>matters. Chandler's stories are about people and
places, and he never needs
>much space to nail them down. "The lobby was not
quite as big as Yankee
>Stadium," Chandler's shamus narrates in Trouble Is My
Business. "It was
>floored with a pale blue carpet with sponge rubber
underneath. It was so
>soft it made me want to lie down and
roll."
This paragraph bugs me, because for my money, Chandler took
the needlessly complex and overly convoluted plots so favored
by writers in the Christie school, and made them
straightforward, then Ellroy took them and twisted them up
(again needlessly) all over again. Of course this is not to
say that James Ellroy is the second coming of Agatha
Christie, unless Christie had a well-hidden obsession with
chronicling sleaze of which I am unaware.
This paragraph also makes me think of what it would have
taken for the quote from Chandler to have been written by
Ellroy. Let me editorialize:
"It was floored with a multi-hued sewer and a cesspool
bubbling just beneath the surface. It was so inviting to
someone like me, it made me want to lie down and roll."
Brian
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