The gentleman from Ann Arbor was having trouble understanding
the attraction
of Daly.
I suggested the attraction could be understood in the context
of the school
of writing and the time period under study. I also suggested
that the
adjective fun could be applied to Daly's writing and that I
enjoy writing I
consider to be fun.
The gentleman then appeared to suggest that my contextual and
subjectivist
approaches to appreciating an author may not be appropriate.
Instead, he
took a more objectivist tack, explaining that there were in
fact Good
Writers and Bad Writers, as opposed to writers a person likes
and writers a
person doesn't like. He then attempted to establish his
authority for
speaking by asserting that he and his students know Good
Writing when they
see it.
He also seemed to be questioning my authority to speak by
suggesting that I
believed pretention and profundity were the same thing.
Either that or he
was trying to explain to me that he understood why I had
employed two
different adjectives. I'm not sure which, although I strongly
suspect the
former.
He did not suggest that Chandler, Hammett, Cain and Davis
were Bad Writers,
though. He believed they were the Good Writers.
Greg
swan@poboxes.com
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