Etienne wrote:
>The biggest problem I had with most of Mcdonald
novels
>is that they surely don't reflect the place he
holds
>on the American "hall of fame" for noir/HB
writers.
>Most of the critics of mystery lit put him on
the
>podium with Hammer and Chandler!
I think you mean Hammett, don't you?
But Ross Macdonald a second rank writer? Uninvolving? Maybe
his books lose something in the journey overseas, but for a
certain generation
(or maybe just a certain age), Macdonald's books hit a nerve.
I think we discussed this before, how many of us seem to fall
in love with Macdonald's work at the same age, somewhere
around our late teens, early twenties? That period where
we're all trying to come to terms with our screwed up
families? In some ways, and I'm sure I'm not the first to
suggest it, Lew Archer is the ultimate father figure in
detective fiction. Or maybe it's just me. Though I do think
people tend to take his books personally.
And it's the weight of all that misery he's plowed through,
and those nasty secrets (noirsih secrets, George calls them)
he's uncovered, that's left Archer the quietly compassionate,
but hardened man that he is. Having him bitch slap a thug or
shoot his gun more often or start a riot wouldn't, in my
opinion, make his character any more hard-boiled. Nor would
it be true to his character.
I've always contended hard-boiled is mostly about attitude or
tone, more than a mere setting or a plot device. File him
under QUIET HARD-BOILED, like Mark says, alongside folks like
Dan Fortune and Nameless.
--
Kevin Burton Smith The Thrilling Detective Web Site http://www.thrillingdetective.com
Now online: The P.I. Poll Grab Bag. Fiction by Laura Lippman, Darren Subarton, Robert Hoyden and Kent Westmoreland. And the debut of FEMME NOIR. -- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 30 Mar 2001 EST