All of Cain's books are interesting and most of them are
great novels. While Hammett's The Thin Man & The Maltese
Falcon are great books, the others tell the breakneck speed
he wrote at. The Glass Key, The Dane's Curse are pretty awful
in my opinion, and the Continental Op is a cartoon. I would
say Cain's only equal is Jim Thompson. They're, of couse,
much different stylists, but their quaility is consistent
from book to book.
Patrick King
--- Dave Zeltserman <
dz@hardluckstories.com> wrote:
> Double Indemnity is a special book, but I've
liked
> most of James M.
> Cain's books, even The Butterfly, although I
like
> Hammett a lot
> more. Two totally different styles and I can
believe
> that neither of
> them read each other. Btw. It's been years since
I
> saw the movie
> version of The Butterfly, but as chessy as it was
I
> kind of liked it.
>
> --Dave Zeltserman
>
> --- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Chuck Emerson"
> <chuckelp@...>
> wrote:
> >
> > just finished reading
> > The Butterfly..............
> > reprinted by Vintage in Three from
Cain..........
> > therein is printed a preface Cain wrote to
The
> Butterfly.
> > Read like his version of On Writing.
> > six pages well worth the stopping by to see
him
> separate himself
> humbly from
> > Hemingway and shrug off any resemblance to
Hammett
> ("I've only
> read 20 pages
> > of him in my life....")
> > I particularly liked his call for fiction
writers
> to dispense
> with "hesaid"
> >
> > I still like Double Indemnity the
best.
> >
> >
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have
been
> removed]
> >
>
>
>
____________________________________________________________________________________
Check out the hottest 2008 models today at Yahoo! Autos. http://autos.yahoo.com/new_cars.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 28 Sep 2007 EDT