Well, maybe some of the critical respect was jump-started by
The New York
Times Book Review piece. But his popularity (he supposedly
sold a whole
hell of a lot of books-one article I read recently mentioned
"Stephen
King-like sales") must be based on more than a few pieces in
the NYTBR.
Were all those fans taken in? For a lot of people, the Lew
Archer books are
a literary touchstone in their lives, and certainly in mine.
I read one, by
chance, and had soon devoured them all. And I knew nothing of
Macdonald's
critical rep, other than a few scattered cover blurbs, until
years and
years later. Certainly, some of the puffery about Macdonald,
particularly
by Macdonald himself, is hard to swallow. And not all the
books are that
strong. Then again, he wrote lots of books, more than Hammett
and Chandler
combined. But he did take the crime novel in directions it
had never gone
before, and sold a lot of books doing it. And in the long
run, he's
remained a strong influence on the hardboiled genre, like it
or not.
Certainly you can see traces of Archer's compassion (or
bleeding heart
weenie-ness, depending on your point of view) in the work of
Robert Parker,
Robert Crais, Michael Collins, Bill Pronzini, Sue Grafton,
Joseph Hansen,
Jonathan Valin and Stephen Greenleaf, among countless others.
Someone must
have actually read the books, and not just a few newspaper
pieces.
As for whether that makes Macdonald #3 or not, well, who's
keeping score?
But his rep was pretty much manufactured? That's like saying
The Maltese
Falcon is only viewed as a classic novel because Bogart was
so good in the
film.
As for whether THE MACDONALD CONSPIRACY is covered in Nolan's
book or not,
there is a short piece, entitled exactly that, by William
Goldman (one of
the conspirators) in INWARD JOURNEY, edited by Ralph Sipper
(1984,
Mysterious Press).
Oh, and welcome to the list, Jeff.
Kevin Smith
The Thrilling Detective Web Site
http://www.colba.net/~kvnsmith/thrillingdetective/
Now out: The February issue, with fiction from Robert Iles
and Leigh Brackett,
and Face the Face, our new contest for fans of paperback
eyes.! Yippy!
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