I emphatically agree. One of Chandler's major points was that
a
mystery novel should be enjoyable to read all the way through
-- that
it should still be an enjoyable experience even if the last
pages were
missing. This example was put to the test for me. In those
days I
found most of my reading in the used book and magazine shops
on
Washington D.C.'s 9th St. NW. I'd been devouring John
Dickson
Carr/Carter Dickson books for several years by then but was
just
starting to get into the heavier stuff. One of the
Carr/Dickson
books, a used paperback, was missing its last pages -- I
think the
entire last chapter. Some miscreant had ripped the pages out
and it
hadn't occurred to me to check for such things when I was
buying a
handful of books (three for a quarter). I was infuriated --
so much
so that I decided I'd read all of Carr/Dickson's books I ever
needed
to (over 60 by then). Without its final chapter the book was
a total
cheat, full of endless Had-I-But-Knowns and melodramatic
obfuscations,
a waste of my reading time. Pissed me off.
Around that same period of time I picked up a pb copy of
Chandler's
_The Little Sister_ which turned out to be missing the last
three or
four pages, a fact I didn't discover until I'd read the rest
of the
book. The book, typical of its era, had a lousy binding, and
the
last few pages had fallen out. It didn't bother me very much.
Six
or seven years later, while writing _Android Avenger_, I
reread all my
Chandler in chronological order, to immerse myself in his
writing and
maybe let a little rub off on me. Once again I discovered
that my
copy of _The Little Sister_ was missing its final pages. I
was
living in Brooklyn then and I'd found an out of the way used
book
store under an El, where I bought a slightly newer copy of
Chandler's
book -- and finally read the ending. It was good; it took the
book
up another notch. But the book was still an enjoyable read
without
it.
All this discussion makes me think maybe it's time I reread
him again.
(Sorry, Dave White -- are we related? -- but I find
Parker
unreadable. The only "Parker" I like is in Westlake's Richard
Stark
books. To each his own....)
--Ted White
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