On Mon, 4 Dec 2000, Kevin Burton Smith wrote:
> >Catalogue of
> >Crime (1971).
> Yeah. I remember going through it quite a few times
several years ago
> at a local library. While any ambitious
bibliographical/critical work
> of that scope is bound to contain errors, I seem to
recall A
> Catalogue of Crime having some real honkers, and
some of the opinions
> (even if they are only opinions) really out to
lunch. Though to be
> fair, at this point, I can't recall any of them.
Maybe something like
> Hammett being a hack and a vulgarian? Anyway, I know
I stopped using
> it as a reference source. Then again, who am I to
talk about bloated,
> opinionated reference sources?
[Kevin, there's something wrong with your e-mail. I may have
more of my senior moments, but using the reply technique the
quote of your message looks just like it did earlier. Or
maybe my e-mail is busted.]
Barzun's and Taylor's book is almost useless. There are short
short short reviews of books you don't want to know about --
some obscure early 20th century British holiday writers --
and those you want to know about are dismissed easily. And
what's the point of having only one or two of the books by
some author? Take Day Keene for instance, he's only discussed
in the case of two books, his first and rather weak
novel
"Framed in Guilt" and some other which the two critically
open-minded readers don't like either. And I believe they are
only people on earth who don't like the Schlock Homes stories
of Robert Fish. Don't waste your time on that book. Usually
browsing through a reference work such as this is intriguing,
but not with this one.
Juri
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