Marc,
Re your comment below:
> Remember that Chandler's essay was a direct
response
> to Sayers' introduction to her first OMNIBUS
OF
> CRIME, in which Sayers said that detective
fiction
> "does not, and by hypothesis never can, attain
the
> loftiest level of literary achievement." (He
was
> also responding to Auden's esay "The
Guilty
> Vicarage," which said much the same thing.)
Chandler
> disagreed with Sayers and Auden,
obviously.
>
> Chandler's attacks on the sort of fiction
that
> Sayers wrote was thus not unprovoked, perhaps...
but
> I am biased, I admit.
That's quite true. But rather than rebut Sayers's actual
hypothesis, that ANY crime fiction, by definition, could not
achieve literary excellence beyond a certain level,
Chandler's response was to say, essentially, "That may be
true of the crap YOU write, but not of the fine stuff written
by me and my brethren." And he specifically singled out one
of Dorthy L.'s books for criticism.
Don't get me wrong. I enjoy Chandler's essay. But I don't
think there's any doubt that TSAM, far more than Sayers's
intro to OMINIBUS OF CRIME, contributed to the tension that
exists to this day between partisans of traditional mysteries
and those of hard-boiled/noir, as exemplified most recently,
apparently, in Russell James's article (which I haven't read
so I'm going by what I've heard).
JIM DOHERTY
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