<<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.>>
The problem is that Oates's review is only a rehashing of her
typical
rants. It's not even clear that she re-read Chandler in order
to write
about him. I bet she knew ahead of time that she was going to
pan the
entire thing. The fact that she agreed to review Chandler's
complete
works while despising not just Chandler but the entire
hardboiled genre
says something about her ethics (perhaps too strong a word,
but close).
On top of this, her review is totally humorless...it's an
indictment.
<<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.>>
The attention is always welcome - and the New York Review of
Books gives
reviewers a lot of space. Oates wasted a lot of that space on
rants
related to her private agenda. From her review, a reader
would not get a
sense that Chandler is an exciting writer - or one worth
reading.
There is something ridiculous in the situation: a weak writer
reviews a
much greater one and entirely misses the point. A similar
thing happened
in the Atlantic Monthly when Jane Smiley wrote a piece on
Huckleberry
Finn (it was so bad it was good).
Regards,
MrT
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