Couldn't resist a good Ross MacDonald thread, so de-lurking long enough to
comment here:
On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 8:59 AM, Patrick King <abrasax93@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> I'm sorry, Ken, but Ross MacDonald wrote the same story over and over and
> over. If you've read one, you've read 'em all.
>
This is an oft-repeated, broad-brush, and therefore inaccurate statement.
MacDonald's well-documented personal/family problems and obsessions led him
to riff on the same theme repeatedly during his hey-day (beginning with
1959's THE DOOMSTERS up at least through 1966's BLACK MONEY) and past it,
which is hardly the same thing. And his early work (Non-Lew Archer novels
such as THE DARK TUNNEL, BLUE CITY and TROUBLE FOLLOWS ME) was not only more
hard-boiled, it was far more varied in theme.
But saying that reading THE DROWNING POOL is the same thing as reading THE
CHILL is the same thing as reading THE WYCHERLY WOMAN is the same thing as
reading THE ZEBRA-STRIPED HEARSE is akin to saying if you've seen "The Old
Guitarist," you've seen all of Picasso's paintings, or even that you've seen
all of his "Blue" period paintings, and yet "The Old Guitarist" and the
"Portrait of Suzanne Bloch," while both from that period and thus similar
thematically, are decidedly not the same.
> As for John D. MacDonald, it doesn't get much preachier or more
> self-pitying than poor, old McGhee. The stories are often good, though, but
> his sentimentality destroys the hard boiled effect.
>
On this we agree.
Brian Thornton
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