RARA-AVIS: Mike Avallone
DOUGLAS GREENE (dgreene@odu.edu)
Wed, 3 Mar 1999 09:54:05 EST
Like Bill Crider, I corresponded with Mike Avallone for a
number of
years. His letters were written at white-hot speed--like his
books--he called himself "The Fastest Typewriter in the East"
or
something like that. I liked him, but his high estimate of his
own
abilities was sometimes off-putting, though in some ways it was
better
than the low estimate that others had of him. True, he could
write
hilariously bad sentences; true, his plots didn't always make
much
sense--but he had a drive, an energy and (perhaps most
important) a personal, and somewhat cockeyed, view of the world
that was great fun. Someone--it may have been Mike
himself--called
his world a "Nooniverse," and his shamus, Ed Noon, was a
marvelous
creation.
Doug
Doug
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