Brian,
Re your comment below:
"Say what you will about Spillane. His writing has not stood
the test of time very well. Read a chapter of
'The Maltese Falcon,' then one of 'The Long Goodbye,' one
from 'Build My Gallows High,'one from 'The Phantom Lady,' and
then one from 'The Galton Case,' then read a random one from
either 'I, The Jury,' or 'The Girl-Hunters.' There's a
serious drop-off there, energetic prose or not."
You may not like him, and you're more than entitled to your
own opinions and tastes. But you're not entitled to your own
facts.
The one thing Spillane HAS done is stand the test of time. I
THE JURY is still one of the top-selling mysteries ever
printed. Virtually everything he's ever written is still in
print. He's still written about, studied, and argued
over.
No other PI writer from that era, not even Ross Macdonald,
has stood the test of time as well.
Is he as good a writer as any of the others you noted?
I would say he's not as good as Hammett or Chandler.
But in some respects, in terms of narrative drive or setting
atmosphere, or manipulating emotions, he's better than
Macdonald. He's occasionally the equal of Woolrich at setting
atmosphere, and, as melodramatic and "cartoony" as his plots
are (and I cheerfuly admit that you're right about that, but
that's kind of like condemning sugar for being too sweet or
pastrami for having too much fat; sweetness is the point of
sugar, fat is the point of pastrami, and cartonnish meldrama
is the point of Spillane), they're generally more believable,
and more logically worked out, than Woolrich's (though that,
I admit, is damning with faint praise).
You don't like him? I won't try to convince you. You're the
best judge of what's to your taste and what's not. But nobody
stays on top as long as Spillane has without having something
worthwhile to offer.
JIM DOHERTY
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