If there's one person on this list who I wouldn't want to
cross swords with about Macdonald, it's Fred Zackel. (See
page 370 of Tom Nolan's excellent Macdonald bio for the
reason.)
Fortunately, I think Fred has got it right. There's a
sympathy or understanding about the human condition that I
don't see in the other writers' work. We don't even have to
call it compassion; we can call it empathy. I don't think
Hammett or Chandler have much empathy for the people who do
wrong in their books. Macdonald does.
Another way to think about it is Macdonald is more concerned
about motivations and causation than the other two are. And,
typically, the causations in his books have to do with family
history, or, more properly, family karma. And if you read the
Nolan biography, you might conclude the empathy came from
personal experience.
I've read all Macdonald's books and I admire him very much.
What I don't like about his writing is the somewhat stilted
"intellectual" tone his descriptions--and particularly his
similes--assume. When he tries to out-Chandler Chandler, I
think he fails.
Here are some examples. I pulled two books at random off the
shelf. On page 3 of my paperback edition of the Doomsters he
says about a coffee maker,
"The grounds in its upper half were like black sand in a
static hourglass that wouldn't let time pass." I'm not sure
what the point of that is and I
*am* sure it didn't add anything to the description of the
scene. Nothing like a Chandler, "A few locks of dry white
hair clung to his scalp, like wild flowers fighting for life
on a bare rock" which drives home the image of a failing
General Sternwood.
On page 7 of the first of The Instant Enemy, "Two people were
striding along the fairway, a man and a woman, both
white-haired, as if they'd grown old in the quest for their
small white ball." There's way too much meaning being
invested in this older couple out for a game of golf, and
it's a meaning that doesn't have anything to do with the
scene in which its inserted.
Who did Macdonald influence--or who writes in his tradition?
I think a comparison to Lehane might be appropriate. Does
Lehane have empathy for his characters in Mystic River?
back to lurkdom,
Mark
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