Re: RARA-AVIS: Ross Macdonald's influence

From: Richard Moore ( moorich2@aol.com)
Date: 30 Nov 2004


I think Gault's putdown was more of Ellroy's choice of quotation than a general statement of Macdonald's writing. He clearly loved to needle his friend as when he dubbed Margaret the real writer in the family. I think he always got a reaction and that to a kidder that makes temptation hard to resist. But Gault was also clearly very fond of his old friend as he made plain in his letters to me.

Richard Moore

--- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Jacques Debierue"
<matrxtech@y...> wrote:
>
> The toning down of the hardboiled stance in Ross Macdonald
> may be related to the fact that Macdonald did not start out in the
> pulps but as a "serious" novelist. He definitely wanted to be
> taken seriously. His realistic and objective style is one reason
> why he was taken far more seriously than most genre writers.
> Another is his constant exploration of the human psyche, which
> is unusual among PI writers even today.
>
> To an imaginative, protean, cut-to-the-quick writer like Gault,
> Macdonald must have seemed sterile. Macdonald would be the
> literary equivalent of Bergman (same story, or fragments thereof,
> over and over, always solid, always moving, always the same...).
> Hell, Macdonald is overrated and Gault is seriously underrated.
> There, the cycle begins all over. Now I'm forced to read an Archer
> or two to balance the pH...
>
> Best,
>
> MrT

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