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Re: RARA-AVIS: Hello 

"John D. MacDonald was a repetitive hack" seems a bit unfair, though some
of his stuff *is* pretty much unreadable. 

I don't see Ross MacDonald as having the same world view as either Hammett
or Chandler (keep in mind I haven't read the Entire corpus of any one of
these authors, so . . .). RM's world, though "hardboiled" in the sense
that toughness rules, is more morally complex than that of either of his
eminent predecessors.  Feelings of love and affection are distractions to 
be overcome in a (GREAT) novel like The Maltese Falcon, whereas in
RMacDonald's (originally Kenneth Millar's) The Dark Tunnel, the
protagonist is propelled at least in part by his love for both his
ex-lover and  his dead friend, as well as his hatred for Nazis.  Spade
doesn't have much of any real affection for his dead partner, Archer.
It's thus somewhat ironic that RM later named his own detective (Lew
Archer) after this dead partner, as if MacDonald were recuperating someone
(or some ideal . . . something) for which Hammett had little or no use.

Perhaps I should be comparing Hammett's work to MacDonald's Lew Archer
novels, rather than to MacDonald's early work.  I'm not denying a kinship
betw. RM and DH (or RC). Such a connection is patently clear. I think that
RM adds, for better or worse, a humane dimension to his fiction.
"Politics" and "feelings" prove much harder for the protagonist to shake
off. Michael

======================                 ===================================
Michael D. Sharp                       "I'm a white male, age 18-49. 
msharp@umich.edu                       EVERYONE listens to me, no mat-
Department of English                  ter how dumb my suggestions are."
University of Michigan                                  --Homer J. Simpson

On Thu, 16 Jan 1997, Ann P. Melvin wrote:

> William Denton wrote:
> > 
> > On Wed, 15 Jan 1997, Davis Skene Melvin wrote:
> > 
> > : I'm the new kid on the block.  My interest in hard-boiled detective
> > : fiction is wrapt in my interest in crime fiction in general and
> > : Canadian crime fiction in particular, of which latter I am THE
> > : bibliographer, having just published: CANADIAN CRIME FICTION
> > : 1817-1996; an annotated comprehensive bibliography and biographical
> > : dictionary of Canadian crime writers,
> > 
> > Hey, nice to have you here.  I heard an interview with you done by
> > Shelagh Rogers, I think, on the CBC a little while back.
> > 
> > Do you know of any Canadian novels that qualify as hardboiled?  Howard
> > Engel's Benny Cooperman mysteries are usually held up as being about
> > as close as a Canadian can get, we being a quiet, retiring people.
> > The books are quite good, but Benny's more softboiled, or even poached
> > (and he loves to eat egg sandwiches).  I prefer Eric Wright's Charlie
> > Salter books, but they're more Canadian police procedurals (until
> > recently, I think he's changed a bit lately).  Are there any Canadians
> > who write more classically hardboiled stuff, or twisted noirish
> > things?
> > 
> > Speaking of bibliographies, I have pretty well finished off Ross
> > Macdonald (I don't know if I mentioned that before), John D. MacDonald
> > and James M. Cain.  JDM was quite a demon, he really pumped them out.
> > Again, corrections are welcomed - thanks to Michael Sharp for a lot of
> > additions and corrections to the JDM biblio.
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > 
> > Bill
> > http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/biblio/
> > --
> > William Denton : buff@vex.net     <-- Please note new address.
> > Toronto, Canada                   <-- I'm not at io.org any more.
> > http://www.vex.net/~buff/         Caveat lector.
> > 
> > -
> > # RARA-AVIS:  To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis"
> > # to majordomo@icomm.ca
> 
> RE Canadian hard-boiled
> The hardest-boiled Canadian writer was
> John Frederick Brock Lawrence, 1907-1970,
> who wrote a hardboiled cop series set in NYC for the pulps in the '30s.  
> Frances M. Nevins Jr wrote a good article about him for _Armchair 
> Detective_, vol.25:no.1, (Winter 1992), pp60-70.
> For Canadian writers setting hardboiled stories in Canada, the closest 
> approximation yet to a US-style private eye is Montreal private eye Lee 
> Harms IN _Harm's way_ by "Aleister FOXX", (i.e., Alan Annand), NY: St 
> Martin's; 1992.  Annand has also written some `Rock 'em, sock 'em' 
> Don-Pendleton-type thrillers as by "Alan Marks".
> Otherwise, if you equate `hardboiled' with the `needlessly brutal', 
> there's always Laurence Gough's Parker & Willow police series set in 
> Vancouver.
> Benny Cooperman is definitely not hardboiled.  The gritty, hard-edge 
> style is not really to the taste of Canadian authors.  Whereas the 
> American criminous ideal is the private eye as gladiator engaging the 
> villain in physical combat and shooting his way to a resolution -- 
> justice triumphing as undertaker, Canadian crime writing is more subtle, 
> more psychological, more caring.  Not for Canadians the anarchistic 
> libertarianism of the hardboiled private eye carousing as he pursues a 
> career of vigilantism.  If our villains are to be brought to book, we 
> want the state to do it.  Canadians don't trust entrepreneurs as lawmen; 
> we don't believe in privatizing justice.  Americans are romantic and hope 
> for Justice; Canadians are realists and settle for Law.  American popular 
> culture idolizes the sociopath, the alienated who cannot relate and get 
> along, and thus purveys an American dream that is in reality a nightmare 
> of anarchy, a community of fear in which the hand of every person is 
> turned agaisnt each other.  So we have the American demand for guns, for 
> in this dystopic arena where one must be a gladiator to survive it is the 
> best-armed who have the best chance -- weapons make the man.
> 
> In my view, the three American authors who have best expressed this view 
> of American society are Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross 
> Macdonald.  It is interesting that all three were outsiders.  Hammett 
> came up from the underclass, while Chandler and Macdonald were both, 
> despite their birth, culturally British because of their upbringing.  All 
> three transcended the genre and wrote mainstream literary novels.  John 
> D. MacDonald was a repetitive hack and Robert Parker is a self-indulgent 
> disappointment.  Hammer by Spillane represents the amoral Fascism 
> adumbrated by John Lawrence, (supra).
> 
> And here I stop before I slip into lecture mode, as befalls retired 
> professors from time-to-time.
> 
> David Skene-Melvin
> -
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> # to majordomo@icomm.ca
> 

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