Re: RARA-AVIS: Joyce Carol Oates

Robert E. Skinner (rskinner@mail.xula.edu)
Tue, 13 Oct 1998 11:28:22 -0500 I haven't read Joyce Carol Oates's review of the Chandler set, but any
doctrinaire feminist view of Chandler, Cain, Hammett and the rest is
pretty apt to be negative. I find that writers who define themselves as
"post-modernist" are similarly negative in their response. A
hard-boiled story, by its very nature, is politically incorrect, and
bound to evoke an unfavorable review.

On the other side of the coin (and speaking as a fiction writer), any
review of a book in a major news organ is an unspoken assent that the
book bears serious scrutiny, and the fact that they chose Joyce Carol
Oates to do the review means the book is being considered by a (like it
or not) major American writer. Knowing that she took so much trouble to
dislike it makes me treasure my set even more, but many of us, myself
included, would rather get a bad review from Joyce Carol Oates in the
Times than a wildly positive review in the Missoula Daily Register.
It's the space that counts, not the tenor of the review, and people who
notice will sometimes buy in spite of the review.

-- 
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Robert E. Skinner, Director
Xavier University of Louisiana Library
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e-mail: rskinner@mail.xula.edu
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