On several issues:
Hubin's crime bibliography says that Dewey's first novel
"Draw the Curtain Close" (1947) is a Singer Batts novel, not
Mac. The other novel that was mentioned is a one-off ("Every
Bet's a Sure Thing", 1953).
There's indeed lot of compassion in "Mean Streets", the only
Mac novel I've read so far, but it's a bit different than in
Macdonald. And there's no massive suffering and angst behind
the story that is so prevalent in Macdonald's novels. It
would be interesting to read some of the less-known PI
writers of the fourties and fifties (Floyd Mahannah, for
example) and track down the first showings of sympathy.
It's been long since I've read any Ross Macdonald but I agree
that he is more of an influence to recent hardboiled writers
- those have been mentioned already. I'd add John Marshall
Tanner in the list. Macdonald's influence can be seen even in
the Mike Shayne books that were written by Dennis
Lynds.
As for "Gatsby", I've always thought that "The Long Goodbye"
was a rewrite of Fitzgerald's novel - the theme and the tone
are similar, even though the plots are very different. I
don't know what was Chandler's reaction to Fitzgerald.
Juri
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