James Rogers (jetan@ionet.net)
Mon, 27 Dec 1999 14:18:13 -0600
At 01:49 PM 12/27/99 -0600, Bill Crider wrote:
> And sure, maybe To Have and Have Not wasn't so noir
of a moive, but
>>what a great crime novel. Very underappreciated
by Hemingway crits, and one
>>of my faves. I think he was going for a little
Cain in that one.
>
>I've always thought that the first half of TO HAVE
AND HAVE NOT was a
>pretty darn good start at a hardboiled novel. The
second half didn't hold
>up for me.
>
I can't
recall who said that THAHT was, along with "The Killers",
Hemingway's only really hardboiled stuff. Personally, I
didn't actually care for the book. I would pick almost all of
Hemingway's early short stories, but especially "Light Of The
World" and "The Battler", as hardboiled.
I
remember a rock critic saying once that Van Morrison started
his career by imitating Mick Jagger and Jagger was ending his
by imitating Van Morrison. I think much the same thing could
be said of Hemingway with reference to the
Chandler/Hammett/Cain offshoots. But just as they couldn't
equal Hemingway at his rare best, so he was unable to cheapen
his skills as effectively as they. Consequently I find
Hemingway's later books almost unreadable.
When
Hemingway was hot, though, he was just the greatest. Witness
the "irony and pity; pity and irony" passage from _Sun Also
Rises_. Maybe Hammett didn't lift this kind of dialogue, but
Cain and Chandler did for sure.
I think we
sometimes forget - if I can be presumptious enough to suggest
that my better read peers on RARA-AVIS forget anything - that
ALL of the hardboiled writers were originally perceived as
Hemingway spinoffs/ripoffs. You can obviously quibble insofar
as Hammett is writing his early stories at around the same
time as Hemingway is producing _In Our Time_. But I don't
think that there can be a fair question but that later
authors borrowed a lot. And still do: Brett Easton Ellis is
an almost monotonous catalogue of Hemingway moments.
James
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