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Re: RARA-AVIS: Hello 

On Thu, 16 Jan 1997, michael david sharp wrote:

: I don't see Ross MacDonald as having the same world view as either
: Hammett or Chandler (keep in mind I haven't read the Entire corpus
: of any one of these authors, so . . .). RM's world, though
: "hardboiled" in the sense that toughness rules, is more morally
: complex than that of either of his eminent predecessors.

Morally or psychologically?  One of the things I don't like about Ross
Macdonald is all the psychoanlytic stuff.  The book I have on him says
he underwent psychotherapy from 1956-57.  All the Freudian things, and
the way there's always some event from 25 years ago that is the key to
the current mystery, I find rather tiresome.  His earlier works aren't
like that, though, and neither do they stray into being overly
literary.  I read all the Archers about a decade ago, and re-read a
couple last year.  They didn't seem very morally complex to me, but I
may have missed some finer points due to skimming.

A quote I noticed: "My wider and more conscious vocabulary reflects a
change in our living speech ... Chandler's hardboiled proletarianism
has elements of self-stultification."

: It's thus somewhat ironic that RM later named his own detective (Lew
: Archer) after this dead partner, as if MacDonald were recuperating
: someone (or some ideal . . . something) for which Hammett had little
: or no use.

According to this book, Macdonald said he did not consciously choose
the name Archer after Spade's partner.  Lew he got from Lew Wallace,
who wrote _Ben-Hur_ - apparently he liked the name.

: Perhaps I should be comparing Hammett's work to MacDonald's Lew
: Archer novels, rather than to MacDonald's early work.  I'm not
: denying a kinship betw. RM and DH (or RC). Such a connection is
: patently clear. I think that RM adds, for better or worse, a humane
: dimension to his fiction.  "Politics" and "feelings" prove much
: harder for the protagonist to shake off.

I think you'd find a lot more in common between Hammett and
Macdonald's earlier works than his later ones.  But does he add a
humane dimension, or is he more wishy-washy?  Anyway, Hammett's a far
better writer than Macdonald, IMO.

Bill
-- 
William Denton : buff@vex.net     <-- Please note new address.
Toronto, Canada                   <-- I'm not at io.org any more.
http://www.vex.net/~buff/         Caveat lector.

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