Block: Nobody has mentioned Deadly Honeymoon as one of the
isolated Blocks. I like this one a lot, is it a retitled
version of something else?
Crumley: I think The Last Good kiss is one of the great ones.
His last two haven't really "mattered" to me like the earlier
work. I've enjoyed them, but I won't revisit them again and
again, like Kiss or Dancing Bear. Those are bleak
books!
Somebody commented on Crumley and the PI tradition. I agree,
his heroes don't seek out the case--they're not "heroes" at
all, in any romanticized/Chandler sense of the term--but seem
to become ensnarled in the problems. Thus they seem as
heavily influenced by noir and its "finger of fate that steps
out to trip you up" as by straightforward hardboiled
(although it's probably silly to try to make distinctions).
Still that's what puts Crumley squarely in a more relevant
category than Chandler for me. Chandler seems almost quaintly
romantic, despite his being a great writer. Marlowe's
knight/quest is noble, but Mike Hammer lives in a dirtier
world, for example, and responds appropriately, shooting
people in the guts and such.
As
Sllichtman@aol.com quoted,
>At a book signing at Borders in Philadelphia a few
years ago Ellroy said
that
>he thought Chandler stinks, and that James M. Cain is
the real deal. He
also
>added, maybe less controversially (maybe not?), that
Chandler wrote about
the
>world the way he wanted it to be, whereas Cain wrote
about it the way it
was.
This seems an appropriate distinction. I love Cain and
Chandler equally, however.
-dc
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