Re: RARA-AVIS: RE: Review of Chandler Papers

From: Juri Nummelin ( jurnum@utu.fi)
Date: 27 Feb 2001


On Tue, 27 Feb 2001, Dick Lochte wrote:

> I find it odd that readers (on this list especially) get bent out of shape
> by Peter Temple's comment about Gardner and Cain being forgotten but have
> not taken issue with his statement that "Hammett's equipment was
> second-rate. His prose was only slightly less wooden than that of most
> pulp-magazine writers, and there is something naive about his world view."

You're right. Hammett might have been a bit clumsy at times and some of his plots are dated now, but his prose is as clear as a fountain lake
(if this metaphor fits the subject). I just reread (in the translation) Peter Haining's "Pulp Frictions", a merely mediocre anthology, in which Hammett's (or Peter Collinson's actually) "Arson Plus" shines as a gem.

> And Cain, though currently out of vogue, made a large
> enough contribution to the genre (paving the way for Thompson, Goodis,
> Willeford, Woodrell, etc.) for him to be remembered by most mystery readers
> and, one hopes, every mystery writer.

You're right also on this. The writers Cain influenced might in the end provide more interesting body of work than those who followed Chandler's work.

Juri

--
# To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
# majordomo@icomm.ca.  This will not work for the digest version.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 27 Feb 2001 EST