Yeah, it may have been the teacher's fault too, but I doubt
it. As I get older, I find myself falling out of love with a
lot of mystery/noir writers that I adored as a young man.
Tastes change, I suppose, and you start to get hungry for
novelty too. Ten years from now I don't know if I'm still
going to love Patricia Carlton, but I sure do like her now. I
don't dislike my former loves as much as I now dislike
Chandler but, for example, I no longer consider Fredric Brown
god. Maybe I burned myself out on the genre to a degree. I
still discover little things here and there that give me
great reading pleasure
(e.g. Niccola Griffith's kung-fu-dyke-noir "Blue Place"), but
I often find myself getting quite desperate for a genre book
that can get me all fired-up with joy. Recently, Owen
Wister's "The Virginian" rekindled my love for westerns.
Haven't latched onto a really great new crime writer (the
last one that really blew me out of my seat was Kent
Anderson's incredible "Night Dogs").
At the moment, I'm on a dual mission to plow through all the
old unread Eric Amblers I've got laying around (does he
qualify as mystery?), and to re-read all the Russians I've
not read in a decade...still on Dostoyevsky right now...so
far he's holding up better on second reading than Chandler
did.
In that Chandler class, my professor's teaching style
disagreed with me; personally, whatever pleasure one might
derive from reading "The Big Sleep"...stretching out that
comparatively short and readable book into more than six
weeks of "close reading" ought to make just about anyone
despise it, I think.
David Moran
Marc Seals wrote:
> From: "David Moran" <
davidm@shakespeare-nyc.com>
> >
> > "The Lady in the Lake" is indeed my favorite
Chandler, though.
> > I think that one still holds up quite
well.
>
> Hmm. Though I disagree (obviously) with David's
overall valuation of
> Chandler's literary worth, I thought I'd put in my
two cents regarding his
> best novels.
>
> My favorites, in order:
> 1. The Long Goodbye
> 2. The Big Sleep
> 3. Farewell, My Lovely
> 4. The Lady in the Lake
>
> The other three are fun reading, but I'd not submit
them as evidence that
> the genre can rise to the level of literture,
whatever that means. I've
> taught the first two several times (in undergraduate
courses). Nearly every
> student comes away a fan.
>
> David, who taught that graduate seminar?
>
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