RARA-AVIS: Re: Over-rated?

Kevin Smith (kvnsmith@total.net)
Sun, 22 Feb 1998 17:33:00 -0500 Fran=E7ois? (well, that's how it looks to me) wrote:
>...agree with Kevin
>Smith that The Mexican Tree Duck by James Crumley was not as tightly
>woven as his other books (by the way, he wrote The Wrong Case, not The
>Wrong Kiss). BUT there's nothing pointless or tiresome in Border Snakes
>(his latest novel). The roadtrips are part of a flawless sense of tempo
>and everything in that book makes sense eventually.

Well, like I said, given Milo and C.W.'s taste for pills, booze, coke, and
other goodies, maybe this (seemingly) pointless wandering is intentional.
But I felt the tempo was definitely flawed.

Crumley's attempts to meld the road novel with the hardboiled novel:
sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I thought Bordersnakes meandered
a bit too much. Just me, though. Oh, and sorry about that kiss. It really
was wrong. You're right, I meant Case.

And, Lulu, I don't think it's so much the praise of Macdonald or Leonard or
anyone I was talking about, it's the kneejerk, out-of-context over-the-top
acceptance of that praise by people who haven't even read the books, and
the inevitable backlash when the next book on the racks doesn't meet
(inflated) standards.Don't get me wrong, guys. I like Crumley! I like
Macdonald! I like Leonard! Heck, I even like Lulu! I do! I do!

Unfortunately, the publishers boiled a pretty lengthy (and pretty fair, if
I remember correctly) review down to a few words, and plastered it all over
Macdonald's books for the next twenty or thirty years, and now everyone
pretty much accepts Macdonald as number three on the hit parade, right
behind Hammett and Chandler, and that the Archer books are the "finest
(detective) series ever written by an American." A conspiracy? Maybe by
blurb writers, lazy critics and bandwagon jumpers.

And here's some more nonsense, for your consideration: Just how American
was Macdonald, anyway? He's said he was always an uneasy American, carrying
the burden of a spiritual dual citizenship. He felt he could never escape
his Canadian past, that he always felt like an outsider in California, and
that he expected Canada to "overtake me before I die, reminding me with its
chill and weight that I belong to the north after all." This
detective/writer as an outsider seems to be a recurring theme that just
won't let go, not just in the case of Archer/Macdonald, but also
Marlowe/Chandler, caught between Britain and the States, and all the way
through the genre.

So, the question: who does the story better: the outsider, or the insider?
Or the insider who thinks like an outsider? Feel free to discuss this among
yourselves.

P.S. Is anyone else getting a lot of useless HTML code in some messages?
It's e-mail; let's not get too fancy here. Save the formatting for another
time.

But I digress...

Kevin Smith
Web Guy for The Thrilling Detective Web Site
For info, mailto:kvnsmith@total.net

"Everybody loves a loser,
They wanna see him pay his dues,
Everybody loves a loser,
But they don't wanna stand in his shoes."
-Murray McLauchlan

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