Channing wrote:
"Sure it may reflect some of the 1950's paranoia towards
women, but read from the modern viewpoint it's
insulting."
As is the misogyny of Hammer blowing away real women at the
end of the other books (at least the few I've read). And even
with the real female villains, he remains pure by not
sleeping with only the evil woman, which he rationalizes
until the exposure of evil (which is puritanically tied to
the exposure of flesh) as respecting the one he's really
serious about, in classic madonna/whore dualism.
"However, to further give Spillane some more credit as a
writer, not only was he great at writing hard-boiled action,
but he was skillful in creating page-turning stories and was
the master of ending a book on a stunner of a sentence to
finish off the book with maximum impact."
I think it was Cawelti who said the first line sells each
Spillane novel while the last line sells the next. I agree
that Spillane was a master of the last line. I just have
trouble with most of what comes before.
I agree with Bill that it's probably largely due to age and
generation. However, I wonder why I never could suspend
disbelief or put myself in the past mindset with Spillane,
but can with so many other vintage writers (even if I'm often
bemused at the love at first sight in the purportedly
hardboiled, manly Gold Medal novels of the '50s).
Mark
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