The first discussion I can recall of the Hammett to Chandler
to Ross MacDonald "progression" was from Donald Westlake,
first at a speech at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington
(which I was fortunate to attend) and later adapted into an
article for The Armchair Detective. Westlake didn't state it
in terms of a trendline in the sense that each author
represented an improvement on the predecessors and it seemed
clear to me that he didn't believe Ross MacDonald represented
such an improvement. The progression that Westlake put forth
was that the literary elite annointed one mystery/detective
writer at a time as worthy of acceptance. There was a
campaign to push MacDonald forward which culminated in a
NYTimes Book Review front page review of the latest MacDonald
by Eudora Welty. Soon he was on the bestseller list where he
stayed as he rewrote the same book over and over again as if
he feared falling back to the midlist.
I would generally agree with Westlake that the progression is
not one of ever-upward quality. But I do think those three
authors are more than simply the literary elite's darling of
the decade. Even while believing that MacDonald was not an
improvement over Chandler
(and not absolutely certain that Chandler was an improvement
over Hammett), I think it is hard to deny that MacDonald was
the logical successor as to the most influential PI writer of
his time. In addition to his literary excellence and further
development of the form, MacDonald was also (after the Welty
review) a bestseller. Success generates influence and
imitation where loftier impulses fail.
With that progression in mind, much as I personally admire
James Sallis' work (and have for 30 years), I think there are
other writers who have cast a larger shadow over their
generation. Off the top of my head, I'd say James Crumley is
one very influential writer who pushed the PI novel into new
directions and whose best work continues to be reprinted and
win new fans and inspire other writers.
Richard Moore
--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Duane Spurlock
<duane1spur@y...> wrote:
>
>
> "James R. Winter" <winter_writes@e...>
wrote:
>
> <<
> It's no secret Ross MacDonald was copping Chandler
in his first
five
> novels. It's
> also no secret that Ross was sometimes better at it
than Chandler.
> >>
>
> When you look at the trendline for the literary
hardboiled PI
novel, everyone agrees that the starting point in Hammett,
then Chandler. Some may not agree that Ross MacDonald is
next, but I think James is right here -- MacDonald makes the
leap to the next step, the next level.
>
> I think the next blip on the trendline is James
Sallis. He makes
the next leap, yet -- as with MacDonald -- the tradition is
still visible, or at least can still be detected (if you
will) through the narrative or revelation of character.
>
> I'm using CYPRESS GROVE as my basis for this
off-the-cuff
declaration. True, CG isn't technically a PI novel. But the
narrator is an ex-vet, ex-cop, ex-con (that covers most of
the territory that most PIs use as a background) and is
called in as a "consultant" to help investigate a murder. The
earliest literary PIs -- Poe's and Doyle's creations -- were
considered consulting detectives, I think, so I believe CG
stands firmly in the tradition of PI fiction.
>
> CG, like MacDonald's mature work, is a novel of
revelations --
about self (the narrator), about history (again, the
narrator, and others in the story), about relationships (a
number of characters), about family (just about everyone in
the story).
>
> This is just an excellent novel. Although it veers a
bit from the
traditional PI story, it's solidly rooted in the PI
tradition. Many thanks to whoever nominated here for one of
the best since 2000 -- that posting prompted me to go out and
finally read this book.
>
> - Duane Spurlock
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it
today!
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been
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