A bit late, but I thought I'd add my comments.
A long time ago, I moved on to Macdonald right after reading
Chandler and Hammett (well, what little Hammett was in print
at the time -- the novels. The Continental Op and Big
Knockover). I picked up a few Archers in no particular order
and enjoyed them very much as an extension of the Chandler
paradigm. I liked them enough that I went back and read all
of the Archers in order, in very short order. Obviously,
reading them back-to-back like that, I couldn't miss that
many, if not most, of them adhere to a pattern. However, that
never really bothered me. I took them as variations on a
theme, or the same picture from different angles.
But that was a long time ago. So I was curious how I'd feel
about him now. Black Money is not as good as I remember some
of the books being, but I'm not sure if that relfects
Macdonald as a whole or just this one novel within the
series. Still, I enjoyed it very much. And not just for
nostalgia. I still like the voice and the character. Some
complain that there is not much to Archer, but I actually
think that's a positive. It allows readers to fill in the
gaps as they wish and identify more directly with Archer. At
least that's how it works for me. I actually felt it was a
welcome change from the surplus of personal info/padding many
contemporary crime authors bury their characters in.
The plotting was good, even if Archer makes some pretty big
intuitive leaps. Luckily, Macdonald writes well enough to
slide past those.
And I was finally reminded of which book has Archer
paraphrasing Nelson Algren. On page 178 of my Warner Books
edition, in reference to Taps's wife trying to get him to
take her away from all this, Archer says,
"Clearly she had troubles, and a wise man I knew in Chicago
had said once and for all: 'Never sleep with anyone whose
troubles are worse than your own.'" James Crumley credited
this homily to Archer in his epigram for his very
Macdonald-esque The Wrong Case, but Macdonald credits
Algren.
So I looked up Algren in Nolan's bio of Macdonald (one of
these days I've got to stop using it as a reference book and
actually read it). It seems that Algren was a huge influence
on Macdonald. Macdonald used Algren's stories as examples in
the writing classes he taught. He also partially modelled
Blue City after Algren's Never Come Morning (along with
several Hammett stories).
And that brings me to Gatsby. I re-read Gatsby for the first
time in decades before re-reading Black Money for the first
time in almost as long. Although the parallels were striking,
I doubt I would have noticed them if I hadn't read them
together. (To my surprise, the Gatsby model for this book
does not seem to be mentioned in Nolan.) Martell is clearly a
Gatsby figure, a kid who came up from nothing, got involved
with a gangster and came back for a girl whose idealized
image he had earlier fallen in love with. Both meet tragic
ends that have more to do with love than gangsters. However,
there were also some clear differences. Gatsby was largely
silent about his past, letting others fill in, and inflate
his reputation. Martell, on the other hand, made up and
spread his own stories.
Of course, Black Money is no Great Gatsby, but I still
enjoyed re-visiting Lew Acrher.
Mark
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