Jim wrote:
"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."
Given how much Spillane sold in the '50s and early '60s (then
second only to the Bible in all time sales, as I recall
reading somewhere), his sales can coast a long time and he'll
still be up there. But weren't the Hammers out of print in
the US for a while before the somewhat recent omnibus
editions (and weren't a lot of those almost immediately
remaindered -- I know there were stacks of them very cheap in
my local Borders -- assumedly because sales did not meet
presumed demand)?
However, you're making a big "test of time'' assumption that
was recently touched on here -- are sales the test of time?
If so, literary valuation fluctuates all over the place. Or
is it the determination of experts? And if so, what experts,
scholars, fans, other writers? Each is likely to get you
different answer. (And, if I were honest, I'd have admit I
too often shift between the various points of view to fit
whatever point I am trying make.)
Personally, I see problems with each theory, not to mention
with the test of time notion itself -- I refuse to believe
that I am reading the same One Lonely Night, for instance,
that was read in the '50s, even if the same words are on the
pages. (Similarly, there's a big difference between Spillane
writing setting books in the '50s contemporaneously and, say,
Max Allan Collins doing it in retrospect.) When I enter a
world where men wear fedoras matter of factly, I respond to
it as either nostalgia or history (or both), choose to enter
into the spirit of the times or translate it to my own (as
when I consciously inflate the takes in old Richard
Stark/Parker books). No matter how much I may study the
cultural context of a time, I am at best approximating the
mindset of a contemporary reader, and distancing myself from
the book in trying to approximate it; however, if I don't do
that, I am reading it as if it were printed today. Now as a
reader for pleasure, that is what I would most likely do, but
that means reading it differently than the original readers
did. So, even if I enjoy it, has it really stood the test of
time, implying it has some universality that transcends time,
or has it proved itself malleable to a different time?
Damn, I must be feeling existential today. So much for my not
intellectualizing.
Mark
ps -- And for the record, in my earlier email, I said I tried
to get over the snobbishness too often interwoven with
intellectualism, not intellectualism itself. Not that you
said otherwise, Jim, but you implied that the two might be
synonymous when you joked that I would hate One Lonely Night
if I held on to any intellectual (and by further implication,
pinko) leanings.
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