Re: RARA-AVIS: Ross Macdonald's influence

From: Jacques Debierue ( matrxtech@yahoo.com)
Date: 30 Nov 2004


The toning down of the hardboiled stance in Ross Macdonald may be related to the fact that Macdonald did not start out in the pulps but as a "serious" novelist. He definitely wanted to be taken seriously. His realistic and objective style is one reason why he was taken far more seriously than most genre writers. Another is his constant exploration of the human psyche, which is unusual among PI writers even today.

To an imaginative, protean, cut-to-the-quick writer like Gault, Macdonald must have seemed sterile. Macdonald would be the literary equivalent of Bergman (same story, or fragments thereof, over and over, always solid, always moving, always the same...). Hell, Macdonald is overrated and Gault is seriously underrated. There, the cycle begins all over. Now I'm forced to read an Archer or two to balance the pH...

Best,

MrT

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