Mario wrote:
> --- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Kevin Burton Smith
<kvnsmith@...>
> wrote:
> ead.
> >
> > But it's not what YOU'D read that counts so
much as what other
> people
> > would read -- and are reading.
> >
>
> Well, yes and no. If I'm compiling statistics of
what people read,
> then everything counts. But if I'm giving my
opinion, it' what I read
> that counts -- and what I consider good.
Sure, but what we were (or at least I was) discussing was not
opinions of quality or sales figures, but Parker's influence
on the genre.
> > Yep, your disdain for the work of "that lot",
particularly Grafton
> and
> > Paretsky, has been duly and regularly
noted.
> >
>
> Huh? I never expressed disdain for Grafton or
Paretsky.
Well, you referred to Grafton and Paretsky's work as recently
as a few weeks ago as "a much lower level of literature than
is the norm." One man's praise is another man's disdain, I
guess.
> > The changes brought to the genre in the
seventies and eighties have
> > endured, and what's popular in the hard-boiled
P.I. genre has
> already
> > changed.
> >
>
> But what were the changes of the seventies and
eighties, as a whole?
> That would be an interesting topic of discussion, I
think.
Which is what I've been trying to discuss the last few
days.
> I am a little confused here. I spoke of an explosion
(lots of material
> being published) but you are now implying that there
was a revolution
> in the PI genre, i.e., great innovations.
You're inferring more than I'm implying. I don't think the
P.I. novel in the seventies and eighties went through so much
of a grand revolution as an significant evolution. You can't
tell me you think there's no difference between a P.I. novel
written in 2008 and one in 1958 or 68, can you? Many of the
tropes in the P.I. novel that we now take for granted
(alternative locations, the psycho sidekick, stronger female
and non-white characters, private eyes that wearing running
shoes, fer cryin' out loud, etc.) first crystalized in
Parker's first few books. They weren't so much "great
innovations" as logical progressions of what was happening
both in the literature and the world at large. But Parker got
them all together first.
Without requoting my entire post, suffice it to say that I
feel there's an openness now about what's possible in the
P.I. novel that barely existed pre-Spenser.
And as for your "explosion of material," don't you think
Parker's spectacular success also played a part in
that?
As Max Allan Collins, surely part of that explosion, put it
in a January interview, "Disliking (someone's) writing is one
thing -- ignoring history is another. I am not a huge Robert
B. Parker fan, but he is important, and a lot of us in the
1980s and 90s were able to sell private eye novels because
Bob Parker led the way."
> But what did he do that was new?
My point was that Parker laid the groundwork for -- or at
least paved the way for the acceptance of -- much of what
came after him in the seventies or eighties. Including
Paretsky, Grafton, Mosley, etc. Just as Chandler, in the
thirties and forties, didn't so much innovate as refine and
polish. Parker (and Chandler, Macdonald and Hammett before
him, to name the most obvious examples) didn't create
something radically new so much as assemble disparate trends,
weave them all together in one convenient, entertaining
package, giving them their own personal stamp, and then put a
handle on it for readers (and subsequent writers) to get a
grip on.
Sure, there were black or female private eyes or psycho
sidekicks before Spenser, just as there were lone wolf or
wisecracking private eyes with a code of honour before
Marlowe. Or compassionate private eyes before Archer.
> To me, he is a Chandler imitator, mainly.
Certainly the Chandler influence is there -- and Parker would
be the first to admit it -- but there's far more going on in
the Spenser series than mere pastiche. To dismiss Parker as a
mere imitator is to give the books short shrift indeed -- or
to have missed much of what was going on in them. Much of the
subject matter in the Spenser novels would be almost
inconceivable in a Chandler novel, everything from the frank
and open sexuality (someone once cracked that it took Marlowe
seven novels just to get laid) to the wide-ranging
discussions of race and gender issues. Heck, I can't even
recall any children playing any sort of central role in
Chandler's books. If Parker's goal was to slavishly imitate
Chandler, he failed. But I don't think he was even trying.
For one thing, his prose style, those short clipped
sentences, is much closer to Hammett than Chandler.
But no, he's not imitating Hammett either.
Kevin Burton Smith www.thrillingdetective.com
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