Bob V. wrote:
>All that said, I think that you, Brian "Test of Time"
Thornton,
>objective critic, shouldn't read it.
Point of order regarding "Test of Time": that was Doherty
taking one thing I said in the course of a looooong
discussion on Spillane and beating it to death in an attempt
to win his argument. After all, if you successfully change
the question from whether or not Spillane was any good (I
don't think he was) to whether or not he "stood the test of
time" (an off-hand comment I made and that Jim Doherty
latched onto like a bulldog, thereby changing the
discussion), you don't have to prove that he was any good,
merely that he continues to enjoy robust sales.
Which one is more readily quantifiable?
And I don't claim any objectivity where Pelecanos is
concerned. I don't like his work, test of time, or not.
The same can be said for those mystery writers I really like
(in no particular order): Hammett, Chandler, Ross MacDonald,
John D. MacDonald, Stark, Artuto Perez-Reverte, Parker,
Lehane, Sean Doolittle, Victor Gischler, David Liss, Jason
Goodwin, Rex Stout, Laura Lippman, Eddie Muller, John
Connolly, Michael Pearce, Anne Perry, Walter Moseley, Cornell
Woorich, Ken Bruen, Jason Starr, Al Guthrie, Stephen J.
Cannell, Carl Hiassen, Chester Himes, David Goodis, James M.
Cain, and a host of others. I'm not objective about them. I
like them.
I do not, however, wax rhapsodic about every single thing
they've written. Hammett was the master, but "The Dain Curse"
was a weak entry in his canon. Chandler was Chandler, and
changed the genre, but some of his plots were just "eh." I
think Ross MacDonald was a terrific writer, but I also agree
that he wrote one story over and over, riffing on the same
general circumstances the way a jazz musician improvises on
the same eight bars. Since I like most of his improvisation,
I don't mind that short-coming, yet I am aware of it. Parker
has been known to phone it in, but some of his work is
terrific. Gischler's characters aren't very likeable. John D.
MacDonald treated female love interest characters in Travis
McGee novels the way the writers of the original Star Trek
series treated the guys in the red uniform tunics who went on
landing parties with the captain: expendable, and dead by the
second act. Dennis Lehane had his PI hero Kenzie shot up more
times in any given bo
ok than any regular human being could walk away from
(I've heard it suggested that this was some sort of
back-handed tribute to Mickey Spillane. I couldn't say), and
his supporting character Bubba Rogowski became some sort of
superhero in the later books. Hiassen's got a penchant for
absurdism in his books that pushes the limits of the willing
suspension of disbelief. Etc., etc.
So while I am *not* objective in my affection for the writing
of these authors, I try very hard to be objective about what
they've done, how they've done it, where it worked, and where
it didn't. Just because I like them doesn't mean that I stick
my head in the sand about their short-comings.
So often on this list, discussions of the various authors can
devolve into a "he sucks/no, he's great" back-and-forth. I'm
not interested in that. I don't read this list for that.
Another thing I don't read this list for is the frequent
love-fests that go on here, with no discussion of the
relative merits of the authors whatsoever.
So if someone's going on and on about how James Ellroy
(another writer with a mixed track record in my opinion. A
fact which is well-documented in the RA archives) is the
second coming of Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner all
rolled into one, I may pop up occasionally and say that I
didn't like this or that work, and here's why. I'm not
suggesting anyone change thier opinion based on my
experience, merely offering mine as yet another one to help
complete a picture of the writing of that author.
I guess I'm just not much for love-fests.
Non-Objectively-
Brian
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