Gee, somehow I get the impression this guy doesn't like
series crime fiction very much. However, it hardly seems fair
to compare what he sees as the best of the very best
(Chandler and Macdonald, Ross, at their peaks) with all of
today's crop. Most of the contemporaries of those two would
fail the same test. As a matter of fact, there's a large
contingent that believes Macdonald is guilty of every one of
this writer's complaints about contemporary crime writers, if
not Chandler himself. And while we're at it, why should crime
novelists, writing series or otherwise, be expected (or
desired) to be purveyors of big-L Literature? They write
crime fiction and should be judged by those standards. And
they are different standards, as can be seen when most
"serious" novelists stoop to write in a genre (Auster, Denis
Johnson and Lethem, if he's considered serios, aside); as
much as I like some of his other books, I never got very far
in Madison Smartt Bell's Straight Cut.
The article did make me wonder one thing, though:
"I can't prove this, but it seems to me that the Welty review
started a trend: taking a detective writer and anointing him
or her as not just a pulp writer (not just a Mickey Spillane)
but a purveyor of literature (a Chandler)."
When was it that Chandler began to be considered a "purveyor
of literature," at what point in his career? As a matter of
fact, was he considered such before Macdonald was annointed?
Wasn't it in retrospect?
Mark
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