: While theoretically Chandler's essay gave the kiss of death
to the
: cozy genre, in practice it did not. Long before Chandler,
Hammett
: had roasted Van Dine in a very "hardboiled" review of one
of his
: books.
Bill:
Do you have any details on this? I don't think I've read it.
Eddie
Duggan mailed me some Hammett material a while back, and I
thought it
might have been in there, but if it was, I've mislaid
it.
Me again:
It's reprinted in Haycraft's "The Art of the Mystery Story".
I hesitate
to post this publicly since it may still be under copyright
(it's from
1927). Hammett completely and definitively ridicules Van Dine
and, by
extension, a host of other writers.
I quote from it:
......
This Philo Vance is in the Sherlock Holmes tradition and
his
conversational manner is that of a high-school girl who has
been
studying the foreign words and phrases in the back of her
dictionary. He
is a bore when he discusses art and philosophy, but when he
switches to
criminal psychology he is delightful. There is a theory that
anyone who
talks enough on any subject must, if only by chance, finally
say
something not altogether incorrect. Vance disproves this
theory: he
manages always, and usually ridiculously, to be wrong. His
exposition of
the technique employed by a gentleman shooting another
gentleman who
sits six feet in front of him deserves a place in a _How to
be a
detective by mail_ course.
..............
[Saturday Review of Literature, January 15, 1927]
Regards,
Mario Taboada
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