There's a lot of truth to what you've
said, but anyone who looks at Hammett's life or Chandler's
life after they began to make money, can see that these guys
(and many of their contemporaries) were very serious about
their work, and acutely aware of what they wanted to achieve
as craftsmen or artists.
Hammett did all of his fiction
writing in a twelve year span and ended up disillusioned and
disappointed with his critics, himself, and the genre of
writing he had helped to establish. "This hard boiled stuff
is dangerous," he said. He had hoped to make more of it and
of himself.
Chandler saw himself in much the same
way James Ellroy and Walter Mosely seem to see themselves
these days, as great, serious, novelists whose work has been
misunderstood and underappreciated. He knew exactly what he
wanted to do in his writing, what he was interested in and
what he was not, and he had considerable disdain for those
who failed to see the uniqueness, and value of his stories.
In fact, his move to England had much to do with the fact
that the English critics considered him a major voice in 20th
century lierature.
Writers often write for money; they
did then and they do now. but they don't do it because they
think its an easy way to make a living, or because they think
they've spotted a formula that will enable them to "write by
the numbers." Writing fiction is what they want to do, and
they hope they can get paid for doing it. The fact that these
folks were market savvy and eager to earn a dollar doesn't
mean that they were just a bunch of guys banging out words
they thought would bring in some coin, nor that their writing
choices were mostly market driven.
Jim
Blue
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