--- Patrick King <
abrasax93@yahoo.com> wrote:
> So what you're saying, William, is that if you
write
> anything other than genre, the work you write
in
> genre
> cannot be compared to other genre
writers?
Whoa. Nobody made any distinctions or separations of works or
splitting of collections. Even so, I think Fleming wrote --
maybe even created -- a genre and I think that Graham Greene
whoops his ass every day in terms of talent and vision.
That's just my opinion and not the laws of the unmutable
universe. Soon . . .
Certainly
> THE THIRD MAN is as good a noir novel as anyone
ever
> wrote.
That would depend on how you define noir. I love the Third
Man but don't see it as a noir. That's just me and it's been
well established here that I have a different view of noir
(especially in film) than the majority on this list.
Are you saying it doesn't count because
> Fleming, Spillane, Clancy & Cussler are not
as
> talented at writing as Green is? Do thriller
writers
> get a handicap? Green and, yes, Somerset
Maugham
> too,
> wrote great genre work. How can you dismiss it
or
> remove them from the discussion because they
also
> wrote "serious" stuff?
>
I'm not dismissing anything Greene -- or Maugham -- wrote.
And yes, thriller writers do have a handicap if books
evolving into literature is the topic. Joe Conrad's The
Secret Agent was written a hundred years ago and it still
kicks butt. Because it isn't *only* a thriller. Where did I
dismiss anyone? All I said, if I remember correctly, is that
I don't think Greene and Fleming are in the same league and I
still think that if you limit Greene only to his genre
writings.
(Although I haven't bought that argument. You mean to say
that every novel about a spy is espionage genre? Is that what
you're saying? That The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and
Goldfinger are the same genre?
William
Essays and Ramblings
<http://www.williamahearn.com>
__________________________________________________ Do You
Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam
protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 05 Nov 2007 EST