--- Kevin Burton Smith <
kvnsmith@colba.net> wrote:
> Etienne wrote:
> >SNIP
> >Most of the critics of mystery lit put him on
the
> >podium with Hammer and Chandler!
>
> I think you mean Hammett, don't you?
>
It was Hammett… It's a typo, hoping it's not to be explained
by the Freudian theories of lapsus linguae
(even if here it was more of a lapsus calami by its
form).
> 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.
> SNIP
I have to thank you Kevin for bringing this discussion, and
confrontation of point of views, on an interesting ground by
your remarks about age. I agree with you: personal perception
of readings depends strongly on the age of the reader. This
could be a part of the explanation about our different ways
to perceive R MD's novels. I red Ross Macdonald rather late
compared to other authors (that was end of the 60's- even if
I most probably red one of two of his novels before, but they
were probaly hacked translations and I do not remember them
clearly, not even something negative about them- but my
judgment is not based on these earlier experiences).
I will even add that most of the time the quality and amount
of readings experienced previously by the reader will have
even a bigger impact. And that's a more difficult factor to
assess and "measure"… It seems that some works of fiction
have such high qualities, that re-reading them at different
ages does not affect our judgement about their value (maybe
just modify it by finding other angles, another richness that
probably was less visible on previous readings). And on the
other hand some others will be badly judged, even asking to
ourselves how it was that we could have been impressed by
them at an earlier stage of our life. I am a strong believer
that (unless it was juvenile stuff) your judgement becomes
better because you were exposed to better works and red maybe
better authors. In one word: experience… But the works
surviving our re-readings are most probably the good ones. As
well as those you discover and consider as first class works
later, after a longer experience as a reader…
Even if some works cross the oceans with great difficulties,
I think that experience of reading will have a higher impact
than difference of cultures
(inside the Western culture) on the way someone will judge a
novel - especially of the HB/Noir genre as these novels carry
a significance greater than any
"regionalism" you could find in their set up. The genre works
more on "universal" values like life and death, corruption,
justice, quest for individual values… etc than plot
articulations or settings. Even if these values are often
more implicit than openly discussed in the novels….
> I've always contended hard-boiled is mostly
about
> attitude or tone,
> more than a mere setting or a plot
device.
I totally agree with this point of view.. See my above
sentence about "universalism".
Also, I like to think of HB/Noir as the illegal offspring of
behaviorism and existentialism...
E.Borgers Hard-Boiled Mysteries http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6384
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