----- Original Message ----- From: "Mario Taboada"
> I cannot say how readers in the fifties
reacted.
Not that he was a typical reader, but Chandler had some
pretty strong views on Spillane, whom he calls one of the
"writers of comic books."
In a 1952 letter, Chandler said, "Mickey Spillane is just
about on the same level of phoniness [as James Hadley Chase,
author of 1939's NO ORCHIDS FOR MISS BLANDISH], and as far as
I'm concerned just as unreadable. I did honestly try to read
one just to see what made them click, but I couldn't make it.
Pulp writing at its worst was never as bad as this stuff. [.
. .] This Spillane stuff, so far as I can see, is nothing but
a mixture of violence and outright pornography. [. . .] I
can't see anything else in it. This sort of thing makes the
home boys with their libraries of elegant erotica seem rather
nice people."
In a 1958 letter, he said, "Spillane is perhaps an extreme
example of the sadistic writer, but I may be wrong. I can't
read him"
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