I had already read Chandler and all of the Hammett I could
find by the
time I took that course on hardboiled fiction. It was my
second course
with him, and he and I had already traded some mystery
recommendations
(I turned him on to Gores and Fletch--for years after I
graduated he
sent me notices of the publication of each new book in the
series).
The man was a trip. With his white hair and almost-bushy
beard, he
looked like a thinner William M.Gaines, a smirking Santa
Claus who
always had a mischievous glint in this eye. He kept a copy of
I the
Jury on his desk just to tweak his more button-downed
colleagues in the
English department and used to bait them by saying Spillane
had more
relevance than most of the dead authors they taught. Of
course, he was
exaggerating for effect, he loved, and taught, the eighteenth
English
century novel, himself.
Whatever the ostensible subject of his lecture, it was just
a
leaping-off point. The man had no borders when it came to
culture, he
enjoyed the classics and hardboiled fiction, opera and porn
movies,
alike. He was very influential on my own views about
cultural
relativity. He was one of my favorite professors and I miss
him.
Mark
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